Cafe Taiwan

Super authentic Taiwan cuisine that transports you to Taiwan. From the decor, to the crowded dining room, to the server manners, it's as authentic as it gets in Pleasanton thanks to the owners being from Taiwan. Ordered some traditional dishes and everything was cooked to what you would expect a local restaurant in Taiwan. For me the fried noodles was a touch below in quality due to the noodle texture not being quite on par with the best of the best. Menu prices are also more expensive than what I was expecting for the amount of food and they only accept CASH which is very inconvenient.

A hidden gem! If you can wait a little bit during busy lunch hours, this is a great little family-run restaurant. Today, about 60% of the customers were speaking Taiwanese. The Taiwanese family next to us drove 50 minutes from Brentwood to eat here. For our first try, we ordered "safer" Americanized beef with broccoli along with sweet and spicy Szechuan fish filet. Both were excellent (repeatable)! The beef was tender and fish cooked perfectly with a touch of wine. Price for two lunch specials with tips came to around $20, a great value for the portions, especially for the TriValley. Good-bye, Panda Express!

Cafe Taiwan came highly recommended by a Taiwanese friend. Besides the usual Chinese Cuisine (in the Cantonese style), it's well-known for their Taiwanese home cooking style. This 'hole-in-wall' is small and gets filled up fast. Lots of families come here to eat. Just two ladies work the front so when this place gets busy plus people ordering take out, the service and food come out slowly. But that's okay because once your food hits the table you will be enjoying your time eating. The older lady came and immediately started speaking Taiwanese /Mandarin to us (we both are Cantonese) so that was a good sign we blended well here. For two people, we looked at our iPhones and ordered from the Taiwanese side (Hakka) of the menu. We were not disappointed at all! Definitely would order every thing again! Hakka Dumplings (it's a soup with savory ground pork in a mochi dumpling and green veggies - would order it again in a heartbeat), Hakka Braised Pork (braised pork belly with stir fried green veggies), Ground Pork Over Rice Bowl (ground pork, pickled cabbage, half a Taiwanese Soy Sauce Egg (good 5 spice flavor) over rice), Snow Cabbage with Rice Cake (cabbage, pork, veggie and rice cake noodle), and Spicy Beef Noodle Soup (savory with the right amount of spice and heat. Very tender beef chuck roast stew meat, some kind of noodle, veggies). Unfortunately, no diaper changing table in the women's restroom (and none at the McDonalds and the gas station that share the same strip mall complex). They do have one high chair to use. Value for the money, decent portion sizes. We had plenty of leftovers from our 5 dishes. Cash Only. Their simply divine house tea is very fragrant jasmine. Not easy to see from the street - turn on your Google Maps. It's in the middle of nowhere in Pleasanton. But definitely worth the drive if you love or miss eating great Taiwanese Comfort Food.