Sizzling Sticks Cafe

Possibly one of the worst dining experiences of my entire life. Went in at 7pm on a Wednesday to an empty dining room and it’s no wonder why. Overpriced was just the beginning. What scraps remained of the meat were frozen solid. We promptly left when the kitchen looked at us like we were crazy when we asked them to restock.

First off I have been coming here for over 10 years, and I have always had a great dinning experience! The food is fresh and delicious! The staff is friendly and it’s family owned and operated. They have a menu you can order from and a salad bar. I love this place!

Great quality food and friendly staff. I love that it is locally owned and not a big franchise.

Went to Sizzling Sticks with another couple to eat outside before the Friday Night Northville concert. The servers are very friendly and the food is okay, lots of choices to put in the bowl and a good way to fill up on veggies. Taste depends a lot on which oils you choose to put on your food. Its fun to experiment but some turn out too salty. The outside tables were set up nicely under umbrellas and had flowers in the center.
I was so disappointed that they would not accept two $ 5 off coupons, one for each couple at the table. If we had sit at two separate tables, it would have been no issue. A REAL turnoff for me. Also having chips and salsa first and fortune cookies at the end seems a bit mixed up, ethnically.

Local version of Mongolian like bd as some stated in their review. Nothing over exciting or under pleasant about my experience. Met friends who were already seated outside.
The outside seating was nice for it was a perfect day to be outdoors.
Was able to go get salad and food whenever we we ready and did so an it was delicious. The combination suggestions for types of sauces was a great idea so you know how to mix and get the flavor looking for.
Service was good and overall experience no complaint for the value.

This place was okay. To be fair, I don’t usually do Mongolian BBQ — I’ve never been to BD’s, for example — and we ate here today because a friend lives nearby.
They have a LOT of meats, toppings, sauces, and spices. I tried to follow their recipe for «BBQ» but it was spicy and didn’t really taste like BBQ. Their food was mostly frozen which was a little weird (the meats), I’m not sure if they were supposed to be or not. I added chicken and some veggies. You also get rice and tortillas and tortilla chips/​salsa, so $ 9.99 for 1 bowl is not a bad deal.
Go on their website and get the $ 5 off 2 meals coupon too.
I would maybe come back if in the area, but I might investigate some other restaurants to go to in Northville first.

Like a BD, but local. Some parts of the food line is better some not so much.
The chips are great! but kinda unusual mix with the food.
Outdoor seating too!

I stopped in for lunch. This place is starting to turn into a Hooters. What’s up with the girls wearing black sweat pants? I find this very inappropriate since you have little kids coming in here. At least have them wear aprons if you want to turn this place into a Mongolian Hooters. Even the person i was with said the same thing.

First time diner at Sizzlin Sticks. I had lunch here today with my brother, who has been dining here for years.
I am hooked! Only $ 1 more for the one-​trip salad bar, with a one-​bowl entrée. So worth it, and plenty of food at that! While the salad bar didn’t have an endless array of toppings, it had a generous representation of the basics and everything was fresh
and cleanly presented. I thought the salsa and chips were an interesting twist, and quite tasty.
Once we finished our salads, we went on to prepare our bowls. I was a little intimidated at first, but there is a placard with suggested combinations. You are free to pile your bowl with several different meat/​fish/​seafood choices, as well as veggies, noodles, oils, and spices. After we handed our bowls to the cooks and made our rice selection, we returned to our booth. A little while later our server brought our finished meals. With the fried rice (which I thought was excellent), our entrees ended up being a huge portion. I took about half of mine home, which I will enjoy again later.
I liked the ambiance and décor of the place, and the TV’s didn’t really bother me, but then again we were watching the Lions play @ Eagles in heavy snow, LOL.
Service was friendly and attentive. Our server greeted us as soon as we were barely in the door.
Don’t forget to tip the cooks, too! … :) Will definitely return.

We walked in and no one explained where we go, what it cost, how it works, nothing. That should have been our red flag because it was downhill from there. Some of the meat was frozen and other meat was thawed out and did not look very cold. Mongolian bbq meat is supposed to all be frozen. Not very many veggies to choose from and only one thick noodle selection. They instructed us to sit at our table while they cooked our food. As we sat there for quite awhile I commented to my husband that it was taking an awful long time for stir fry and that it wouldn’t take me that long to cook this. Well guess what … our food was way overcooked and dry. Everything tasted bland and dry … no flavor and I had added a lot of sauce. I had even added dry spices. I think they cooked all the flavor out of it! I won’t be back. Go to BDs for Mongolian BBQ.

Oh my god… This place is dirty. We came here with a number of friends, and I could see right away this place was not kept up, a number of tables (more then 6) were empty and filthy. I watched the cook and another man leaning over the counter watching videos with their phone. I used the bathroom and the door was sticky and really dirty inside the room. The light switch was darkened by a thousand dirty hands switching it on an off. I was afraid to eat, but I didn’t want to be a spoiler among the group, so I went and got my bowl filled to be cooked. They had no small bowls for the sauce that you put on after cooking, so we had to add it to our large bowl of food. When we got the food it was way over cooked and dry, dry, dry. I asked for a small bowl to get more sauce in hopes of a rescue, but the sauce was so watered down it had no flavor or effect on the meal.
You can tell management or ownership does not care about appearance, by the numerous cables hanging at one of the TVs. Also green painters tape left around one of the glass windows after painting (some of the tape was peeled off another but not completely removed).
I’m thankful to have had good friends and good conversation to keep my mind off the filth.
Next time I go… LOL, NO WAY. NO NEXT TIME.

I want to like this place more than I do.
Unfortunately, I find the tortillas and «salsa» they serve terrible tasting and out of place.
I’m also not overly fond of the meat, vegetable, spice selection.
The cooks do a great job, though, and the service is friendly. I appreciate that the servers are natural and not faking it like they do at another (better tasting) Mongolian style barbecue chain in the area.
The price is right, though, and they sometimes run a groupon for 3 — $ 10 vouchers that cost $ 15. This is a nice gift for a local teenager or family.

Throughout college one of my favorite restaurants was a Mongolian BBQ type place near campus, so I had pretty high expectations coming into this restaurant. That said, this place was sad. We opted out of the salad bar and went straight to preparing our bowl to be grilled. The veggie and sauce selection was fairly limited, the meat didn’t look all that appetizing, and, like other reviewers have noted, the chips and salsa seemed out of place. On the plus side, there were plenty of spices to choose from and we had no complaints about the service. When the food came out prepared, it was very meh, so we decided that this would be our only visit to this restaurant.
If you’re craving a Mongolian BBQ place, then do yourself a favor and skip Sizzling Sticks and go to BD’s, or better yet, Flat Top.

If you like Mongolian BBQ, you will be happy here. I am not a Mongolian fan, if I have to go pick my food and put it together. I have to stop and ask myself, how is this going out to eat??? Just not my favorite type of place to dine for dinner out. But, place is clean, meat’s, chicken and fish is fresh, large varity of spices, and service has always been good. I don’t always win the vote for were are we going to dine for dinner! So, it doesn’t totally suck when this place is voted the «it» place for dinner! I do enjoy the salad bar! Just would not be my top pick for dining. Others would disagree with me. Because I always see other happy diner’s in the restaurant when I do get dragged to Sizzling Sticks!
(Sometimes I do have to question… Why don’t I always get to pick???)

I’m kind of surprised by all the positive reviews of this place on here. I’ve been here a handful of times since the place opened and every time I am reminded of why I hardly ever come here. Sure is nice that it is right down the street from me, but you could make this food at home and it would taste way better.
Something I don’t understand is the direction this place is going. A Mongolian BBQ format that serves you Chips (stale most of the time) and Salsa (sucks too) with Japanese wood block prints all over the damn walls. You hardly notice the prints because of the numerous flat screen TV’s all over the place. WTF? A small note about why TV’s have no place in a restaurant: you are here to eat and have a conversation. Having a TV within eyesight does a great job of messing that all up. How can you talk to someone when their attention is being pulled to a flashing 70 inch plasma distraction box? I know décor doesn’t mean diddly to most people, your here too eat. Speaking of which next up on to the food review and believe me it doesn’t get any better.
First of all the rice is bad. Not just bad bad, but worse than day old refrigerated microwaved Uncle Ben’s. I’m not kidding you, half the times I’ve eaten here the rice has stuck too my teeth (Read this as: under cooked) or been so soggy that it was more like oatmeal (Read this as: Way overcooked). Rice is important when your making Asian food. It should be fluffy, airy, flavorful, and delicious. If the bun is bad on a hamburger it doesn’t matter how good your patty is, nobody is going to want to eat it. Rice is the same way. Good rice is your bedrock which you build upon.
The last time we went here was on my mothers birthday. My sister got her rice fried and she hated it as much as I did the plain white. The meat and veggies were fine, but the portion size was smaller than BD’s Mongo BBQ. The price is just about the same and in the end, we left feeling something was missing. That is how I always feel after leaving this place. Sad and wanting so much more.
^^^^^^^^^^^
Just so you don’t think I am bashing this place, I am not really a fan of BD’s either. Recently BD’s is doing a better job making the rice good. It used to taste like barley paste and was way over cooked EVERY TIME!
I guess the moral of the story here is, get a rice cooker and do it properly.

I would like to start by saying although I have had Mongolian BBQ I am in no way a connoisseur of Mongolian BBQ. So with that I would like to begin this review with WTF? I am all for being different or having a modern take on an old favorite. However this place just doesn’t make much sense to me. For instance the chips and salsa. It’s supposed to be Mongolian BBQ not a Mexican place. So the chips n salsa is really out of place. Also the chips are more like a bad tortilla chopped into triangles. It has a weird powdery texture. The salsa is a little thick and in my opinion not a good salsa. Neither had any desirable flavor and after eating them I was really thirsty.
A couple good points, the optional salad bar. A nice addition if you can’t wait to stuff your face then you can get some soup or salad. In addition to that, I will say they have a decent number of options for the Mongolian BBQ. Meats, veggies, sauces and spices. I mean there really is a solid variety.
Yet even with all these options the food is still just so-​so. They do a good job of bringing you the correct order but everything seemed over cooked and slightly dry. I also have mixed emotions about the tortillas. As someone who loves Mexican food I can’t begin to understand why the fuck a Mongolian BBQ place would give you tortillas. As someone who grew up eating tortillas with every meal the Mexican in me liked the surprise of tortillas.
At the end of the day though. I have to say that the idea of a Mongolian BBQ place serving chips ‘n salsa and tortillas with your meal just screams confused. I doubt I will return. My three stars go to the variety and the fact that it’s local. Other than that I probably will not be returning.
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I came here for a second time for a friend’s birthday.
The food wasn’t over cooked and actually tasted better.
However just like my first visit about an hour later I had the…
«Sizzling Shits»

I can’t believe I’ve gone this long without reviewing Sizzling Sticks! Hubby and I have been going here for years. This is BD’s without the BS.
We’ve been here enough that we have a routine: we start with fresh made chips and salsa while the wait staff brings our drinks, then we head up to the BBQ to make our dinner and hand it over to the cooks (don’t forget a buck to tip — they’ll ring the bell for you). Once our stir fries are in the cooks’ hands, we make our salads and eat them while our dinners are being cooked. Unlike BDs, there is no need to wait for your dinner, the wait staff will bring it.
We like the fact that Sizzling Sticks is local, and we like the location, which is conducive to a post prandial stroll. We also don’t mind that they don’t serve alcohol, but some might, so take note.

A million reasons to love this place!
My wife and I had our first date here; 5 years later we had our wedding rehearsal dinner here, so (needless to say) we love this place!
The fresh ingredients make screwing up dinner almost impossible and completely your fault if it happens! It’s a small, kind of low-​key place that is perfect for a first date ;) The staff is very friendly and sometimes the owner makes the rounds to say «hello». The wait is never too long and the food is always worth it.

The two big draws to me for SS are 1) it is local (not a chain), and 2) the dried herbs and spices.
It is smaller than the big BD chain in our area, with less meat choices, and probably less sauce choices. But everything is fresh. And they have, I swear, 30+ spices you can sprinkle on top of your raw bowl to add more complex flavor to your stir fry.
Service is good. Outdoor seating available. Free thick-​cut flour chips and salsa. Fresh salad bar included.

A step up from BDs perhaps, at least it is local.
James and I finally got time out for ourselves and we ran out here on a swing out to Northville to go to Trader Joes and the Sprint store. We couldn’t decide where to go and he was in a mood to experiment a bit but not too much, after veto-​ing several of my suggestions this finally got a nod. We had a coupon so we figured if it was bad we were not going to be out much moolah.
I like the freebie chips and salsa. We both skipped the optional salad and got straight to creating stir fries. We both did all you can eat, mostly because I have paranoia about messing up if I only have one shot at it.
James made a fajita type creation with chicken, beef, shrimp and assorted peppers and ate it happily with the tortillas. He liked it so much he just made more of the same for round two. He was too ambitious though as he did not manage to finish it.
I did a seafood creation with a spicy sauce for starters but I was meh on it and did not make much of a dint in it before admitting my bad choice. I went back and did a chicken and egg creation with more veggies and it matched much better to what I was going for. I liked having the cushion for my fail. I liked the brown rice too.
Service was friendly but yep it was a bit chilly-​ish temp wise in some areas.
Overall it was a decent place and we had a good time with the process of it all.