Downtown Cafe

If you hungry and you’re staying at the Hyatt regency hotel, this is a good spot to get Chinese food. The delivery was on time and the food was great. Best Chinese food so far. The pork fried rise and chicken broccoli without the broccoli though, was on point.

Worst chinese i’ve had. 2 of my coworkers didnt even eat their food because of the texture of the chicken. I had the general tso’s chicken which was horrible and over cooked. They give small servings even with the rice which wasnt good either. The waitress doesn’t speak english well enough to properly serve you. We had to repeatedly ask for thing because she didn’t understand what we were saying. Wasted our lunch break here when we should have went else where. Definitely wouldn’t return even if it was free.

The food pumped out by this kitchen is typical Amero-​Chinese stuff and it’s only a notch or two above bad food court Chineez fud. If you like that style of food — and some people do, I know — then you might find the grub that comes out of Downtown Café to be passable or even good. It isn’t my preferred style of Chinese food, though, so I’m afraid that I can’t rate this restaurant higher than two stars out of five. I’d take a pass on Downtown Café if I were you.

Personally, i think this place is a bit underrated for what it is
A relative cheap, quick lunch place within walking distance, and based on that i think comparing to other establishments of similar circumstance, a 4 star is well deserved
The food is exactly what you would expect out of a chinese restaurant, of course i have to admit that on some days the food actually seems better than other days
Be sure to get here early cause around 12 – 1 u wont be seated for a while
and i believe they have 9 tables per waiter so personally im happy with my water being constantly filled and impressed with the quick service

If I’m going to order Chinese food delivered in my area, they’re the restaurant I order from. They’re fast and their food is pretty good. I would recommend them. Best delivery near me.

I pass by this restaurant almost every day so I thought it would be worth giving it a try. The first thing I noticed was that the table was really sticky. Even the waiter had a difficult time prying the menu off of the table. Of course, he made no offer to have the table cleaned for me. Bad sign. I ordered the lunch special for shredded beef in garlic sauce. I would say the food was average. The fried rice was below average. The beef was OK but a little fatty. The service however was abysmal. After I finished the appetizer, I just waited while other customers who were seated after me received their entrees. I could deal with this if the entrée had not come out cold. It seemed that the waiter simply forgot about my order. I would not recommend this place to others. This will be my one and only visit.

Went here for lunch and I can say the positives are that there was no wait… and service was fast, but i did have empty water glass the majority of the time I was there. I do have to add that I didn’t pay for my lunch, my friend did… so since it was free I gave it the two stars– rice was EH… and the Gen. tso’s chicken had a nice texture but no flavor… my guess is that if can can serve food fast downtown you can serve whatever you want– I would skip it and go to the many other locations downtown with good food.

It had some pretty rough reviews. I think it is a solid 3 star place. Not the best Chinese food I have had, but not deserving anything less than 3 stars.
The staff was quick & courteous. A little slow to bring out the first round of drinks, but after that they were on point.
We had spring rolls, pork dumplings, & crab puffs to start out. The spring rolls were okay, nothing exciting. I normally do not like crab puffs, but I really enjoyed these. The pork dumplings look super water logged, but they ended up being perfectly cooked and tasted great. Two of us had the General Tso’s chicken, one had an orange chicken, and the other guy had the mushu chicken & shrimp. Everyone enjoyed there meal. I don’t know if I was super hungry, but the meal did not seem like enough food. It did look like a decent size, but maybe the cold Houston winter is causing my body to want to store up some winter weight.
It is a close location to our office, so I will be back. If I did not work close, I probably would choose Shanghai River in River Oaks or try out another of the many other Houston Chinese restaurants I have not been to before.

Went here for a quick lunch several weeks ago. My review will be very brief since I found it meh.
We walked in and were seated right away. Reading the menu, my co-​worker asked if he could change rice with noodles on one of the dishes and waiter said NO! Aaaand said it with a Poker face 8 – 0.lol.or maybe thats how the guy’s face always looked. You could have atleast said, sorry these are fixed menu items and you cannot customize.
Almost everything on the menu was deep fried, so trying to eat healthy, I ordered some seafood soup. It tasted like water with seafood in it, no garlic, or spices, or herbs, very meh.
We paid the bill and when leaving there was a side door that had a sign on it
«Door stays open at all times» when we went to open it, it was locked. lol
I guess you can get a warm meal here if you dont mind the taste. Tadum tish!

It’s the closest Chinese place within wlaking distance to my office downtown. The service is very fast and efficient. They are not the most personable people, but seem to always be on their game.
We order a number dish, type of soup and voila, he’s back with your soup. :)
The Chinese food here is not bad. I have tried a dish they call, «wAnderful chicken & shrimp.» I think they may have meant WONDERFUL, and it is quite pleasant :) I have also had their fried chicken wings and combination fried rice. Both are very good.
Quick, easy, good good. No frills, no creativity, but does what we expect of a tiny chinese joint on the corner in downtown houston!

Plus: Best service you’ll find during the downtown lunch rush– these guys don’t let your water glass level dip below ¾. Lunch specials (including eggroll and crab rangoon) are $ 7 – 8, so quite cheap for a good volume of food.
Minus: Greasy food with unsubtle flavors. Every time I have been (4 or 5 times) for lunch, I always end up with many pieces of chicken with unsettlingly chewy cartilage bits.
Recommendation: Order up the veggie dishes to avoid weird cartilage bites.

I came in here again to give the eggplant dish another try instead of going for another dish and this time, the skin wasn’t hard like my previous review! I was actually able to eat the whole thing instead of scraping it off!
I gave an extra start for the server who was attentive, speedy and even bagged my to go for me with additional side of rice! I would suggest that you wait before taking a dive in, these eggplants are HOT! It’ll burn your tongue off right away :(

management needs to revert back to last year’s.
today i was wanting to have some chinese. went there. my lunch reminded me on why i stopped going there.
i used to go there at least once a week and one more time to get something to go. food was awesome.
then sometime last year, it seems management changed. i did not and have not bothered to ask. however, their servings have gone smaller, to go container is smaller.
sauce seem to have changed a little bit, not a whole lot, still above par compared to other chinese restaurants.
today though, i had chicken and shrimp with cashew nuts. had this so many times. very decent taste. however, extremely disappointed with the quality of chicken used. lots of tendon, seem to be from the leftover batch taken from the butcher shop. awful pieces of chicken, lots of fat. 2 pieces of shrimp in the meal. very meaty shrimp.
i really loved their food. hopefully when i try it again towards the end of the year, the new owner will rethink and bring back the good times! i really considered downtown café as one of the best chinese food in town, no more though.
decent service.

Decent Chinese (Hunan) at a good price. The lunch specials give you a lot of food at a good price. Soft drinks are only $ 1.00, but no refills. Service is good, especially for a busy lunch place.
Get here early, because the place tends to fill up after 11.