Baskets Cafe

Finally Bellevue has everything a Taiwanese can ask for! Red bean cakes! They do take a while so make sure you order as soon as you arrive. Dishes seem pretty authentic, will be returning for sure.

The food here is so good. No MSG, everything is the food original taste. Their black pepper sauce is very good. I like it very much. You can try it.

Place is nice and clean, I like the décor.
Food is good too, pretty authentic to me, I do feel like I can get a taste of Taiwan.
I love their coffee, it’s not like those ones you get at McDonald’s, you can tell they put effort into crafting the coffee. I also love their bubble tea, It has a good tea taste and I usually don’t do too sweet so I always ask them to do only a little bit of sugar and they always turn out great.
Staffs are very nice and friendly, looks like some people are complaining about slow service… I’ve been there a couple of times now (during non peak hours), the wait wasn’t bad each time. I’d say average wait time like most restaurants out there.
I did appreciate the waiter told us when we sat down that if we wanted to order the car wheel cakes, we should order right away as they do take a while to make, I ordered those right away and they came when I was almost done with my meal so perfect timing!
One thing I wish is they can expand their menu, more options, more taiwanese food :)

This place is simple and nice. It’s very clean and usually quiet even on weekends. The service is friendly but slow. The food is good but not amazing! We had the beef noodle soup (little spicy and good noodles), the fried chicken rice (not greasy), intestine soup and the mushroom and chicken on sizzling plate (good). We also had the wheel cake, not as tasty as i would like and it takes long time, you have to order it from the very beginning. My favorite wheel cake flavor is custard. My favorite part of the restaurant is that it is quiet and clean, the food is 3 stars.

First off, the food is tasty and pretty authentic. I’d actually give the food a 4-​star rating. However, I could never understand why most (if not all) Asian restaurants always fall into the spell of being «Busy Bees — lots of movement but nothing is happening on the customer front», «Working Hard» but almost everything is hardly working especially from service and efficiency standpoint. This is a typical newly opened (Asian) restaurant that skims on the wait staffs (both quantity and experience wise). Everyone seems to be busy working on something while customers are waiting for attention and services. Everyone seems to be working hard on something but they are not working hard to work smart. I’d suggest anyone planning on opening a restaurant please take notes. Your food is as good as your service and efficiency. Nothing matters if service is subpar and you’re not turning table around efficiently. Please consults an efficiency consultant or hire experienced wait staffs. It will be a pity if this restaurant closes due to lack of experience in running a restaurant.

The restaurant was clean and server were friendly and nice but inexperienced. They have very authentic Taiwanese dishes with great presentation. Spicy wontons and duck wrap was yummy! Service was really slow. Would go if the plan is to enjoy the company with plenty of time to spare. Would come back again.

Baskets Café has potential to be really good, a very Taiwanese-​style restaurant that reminds me of the bright food courts in the luxurious malls of Taipei. They serve a variety of rice and noodle dishes, including sizzling platters as well. My family tried the beef pancake rolls and the pan fried pork buns first, both of which were relatively authentic. I liked that the rolls weren’t overly greasy or dripping with sauce. The pan fried buns had a good crunch on the outside and the right ratio of bun to meat. I also had the minced pork over rice, a favorite dish of mine growing up. It felt like eating a home-​cooked meal, with a side of veggies and miso soup. Although not the most traditional, I appreciated that the pork wasn’t too fatty. Among the four of us we tried other rice dishes as well as noodle soup, and each was just the right portion. Although I love homey food from a restaurant, Baskets Café was almost a little unmemorable. Taiwanese cuisine is on the rise though, particularly in Bellevue, so I fully welcome any new restaurants to the scene!

The food was just ok. However, the citron honey tea was very disappointed. It is water with syrup no tea at all. One cup is $ 3.95 and one teapot is $ 5.50. We have one teapot, the server said it can be refilled. After the refill, it is no flavor at all. And the pot’s size is just as the same as cup’s.

Very clean restaurant but service is way too slow. Staffs are super nice and friendly just need to be more vigilance on the customer’s needs.
Food taste just so so. Ordered fried chicken meal we thought it would include more side dishes instead of just a tiny dish of edamame, rice and veggy broth. Chicken had good flavor not greasy.
Wheel cakes are ok taste but had to wait 30 minutes for them to make more batter.
Don’t think we will be back anytime soon unless they improve the food menu nd service speed.

I don’t want to get excited too early because there just aren’t enough quality Taiwanese restaurants in Washington State. I haven’t tried enough of their dishes to say «This is super authentic and I really love it.» Also, this restaurant is categorized in «Chinese» and «Taiwanese» cuisine, and from my experience, any restaurant in that category is NEVER Taiwanese. They just want to include a few Taiwanese dishes and spice it up.
The first thing I noticed is the great amount of space and the serene décor. I really like it and see myself going there with a laptop enjoying milk tea and pastries. It is a restaurant that may work well in Taiwan as many cafes there look like this one. The service is okay, but mind you my fiancé and I went in the late afternoon at the beginning of the week. Both the location and the time of day doesn’t really attract attention to customers because you can’t really see it from the street.
My fiancé and I tried their wheel imagawayaki, Taiwanese meatball, spicy wonton, and intestine rice noodle soup. When you have this many dishes that weren’t originally from Taiwan, it’s clear that it’s not Taiwanese.
The most authentic and well made dish is the meatball. I know there is a chance they did not make the meatball themselves as I had a hard time finding any restaurant that does. You have to have a big enough kitchen and spend a great amount of time just making the skin of that dish. The meat flavor and skin texture was on par to some that I’ve had in L.A., but not quite to what I’ve had in Taiwan. The skin was not what the Taiwanese call as «Q» and there was too much pepper in it. Q is a chewy yet firm texture almost similar to jello.
The other dishes were just okay, nothing wow. The spicy wonton was missing salt or extra chili because it wasn’t spicy and it just tasted oily. The skin was just shy of being cooked and I’m certain because the dough was thicker, it didn’t have the wonton taste you’d have at Din Tai Fung or even Facing East. The imagawayaki was okay in flavor, though 90% of the flavors aren’t really Taiwanese and the skin was too thick. The custard tasted more eggy and for a personal taste, I didn’t enjoy it. Lastly, I have to be picky about the intestine rice noodle soup. My aunt in Taiwan made this dish from scratch (yes, the noodles too), so I know what it’s supposed to taste like. This one had a weird taste and I saw a few things in it that weren’t meant to be in there. The noodles were also broken up to short strands and the intestines almost a dark brown, which means it’s been stewing for too long. Overall, the meal wasn’t terrible; it just could’ve been better.
There were a few other dishes on the menu I would like to try just to see if something else is better. I’d so far say I’d only come here for the Taiwanese meatball.

soft opening. lack of leadership and operational experience. we came for imagawayaki (車輪餅) on a Friday evening. they have young servers who seem easily overwhelmed. there were many orders ahead of us but they persevered. food was cold because they were not filling the orders correctly. suggest giving them another month to figure things out or avoid evening rush. décor is nice but food is pricy. might as well go to Facing East to get better quality food. the wait is the same except here you are seated. I would also recommend that they offer 15−20% discount while working through the kinks.

We walked in at 6:50pm on Friday night, there were probably 8 – 9 tables with customers, the rest of the tables except a couple all had dirty dishes on them. We had to seat ourselve after waiting for a while. Asked for menu a few minutes later since no one brought us one, had to ask for water. Order about 7pm, food didn’t arrive until 8pm. The food wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. The next morning, my wife and I both had food poisoning, we didn’t eat anything in between, I am still sick after 4 days.

Meh. Its fine. Nothing special and didn’t eat anything horrible either. Interior is fairly good for the location but the sizzling plates (one chicken and one pork) were so so.

This place has beautiful décor and ok food. The service was a bit slow for a Monday evening with only 2 people already seated.
We ordered the sliced beef rolls, spicy chicken, fried buns and intestine vermicelli soup. I thought the spice beef rolls and fried buns were delicious but the fried vuns are noth authentic 生煎包, even though thats what they claim it is. (It’s not shengjianbao)
Everything else however failed to impress on any level. Presentation and taste not accurate or good.
There are so many decent Taiwanese restaurants on the east side. I dont see a need to visit here again any time soon.

I came here twice within a week.
First time, I came here for tea and red bean cakes. The tea and the cakes were very good. The service was fine. The waitress was not familiar with the menu, so the owner came out to explain to us. Very nice, but it seemed that there were not enough helpers, so they never paid attention to our water cups. However, I like how clean and quiet it is. It is a good place where we can hang out with friends freely.
Second time, I came here to try out the food. We ordered beef noodles, Taiwanese style ground pork noodles, curry rice, and teriyaki chicken rice. The food was very tasty. Then we ordered red bean cakes and tea for dessert. Everything was delicious! The only complaint I have is that they were too busy to pay attention to our needs. We tried very hard to waive at them to get some water or some napkins, but they were just too busy to turn to look at us. We ended up walking to the counter to ask for water and napkins. I feel that there is still room for them to improve their customer service.

This place is located in the 520 main shopping center by the yoga studio. What a great space. The ambiance is clean and modern and decorated with teacups from all over the world!
This place serves food and typical café drinks. I would call this more of a place to eat then a place to sit and drink coffee, it can get a bit noisy with all the patrons. There are segregated areas for larger parties and cute tables to seat parties of 2 – 4.
In addition to typical drinks, they serve a variety of hot food from sizzling plates, noodle soups and rice dishes
I got a spicey beef brisket noodle to go with some of the cakes they made (meat and tomato sauce and red bean mochi)
Spicy beef brisket was not too spicey like a 1 – 2 star at most. Very flavorful though I wish it came with more pickled veggies :3
Note on these cakes, they are made fresh and have cute little pandas on them :)
Tomato sauce cake was savory and light!
Red bean mochi was perfect for my tea I ordered at smatcha after as a good dessert
Overall enjoyed this place and the service. Everyone was kind and checked up on you often!

Don’t mistake this place for a coffee shop or «café,» proper. Their coffee was absolutely horrible and they didn’t even have cream. It’s an Asian restaurant, and from the mood of the patrons I saw enjoying the food, probably a good one. But I was expecting a café, so I was disappointed.

The food here is simple and tasty. Once I ordered the food came out within 5 minutes. I was pleased with the fast service because I was able to eat and relax before picking up my daughter from preschool. Come here if you want a decent lunch and good service!

Came here with some friends during lunch, my first impression was, love the decorations. We were not greeted as we walked in, waited at the counter not sure if we were supposed to wait to be seated or order at the counter. We waited for quite sometime before someone came out from the kitchen. The salt and pepper chicken meal was good, had a good authentic Taiwanese taste too. Their traditional milk tea with tapioca was not impressive in anyway. My friend couldn’t even finish hers. They have a very limited amount of choices to choose from. Even though they’re serves is lacking I would still give them another try.

Nice interior design and great service. Highly recommend the large intestine noodle, truly Taiwanese style.