Came back after a short hiatus and it feels like they've amped up their food. I especially like how you can combo up some of their dishes and we had the beef noddle soup combined with pigs ears and crunchy pickled cucumber side dishes. The beef was very tender and the bowl of soup came out piping hot. We've had many of their other dishes over the course of numerous visits and you can't go wrong! The service is good and the interior is nice and clean with pictures of Taiwan adorning the walls.

MonGa Cafe is an adorable, neighborhood Taiwanese joint. I went for dinner around 7PM on a Thursday and there was a short wait for dine in with a bunch of folks picking up to-go orders. They share a large parking lot with Asian Family Mart and pricing is is reasonable enough with some of the combo meals clocking in just over 15 bucks. MonGa Combo (4/5): Lu Rou Fan is pretty great, but I wish the ratio of meat to rice was a little higher. Loved the fish ball soup - super light and perfectly savory. Would probably be my go-to! Pork Chop w/ Rice (4/5): I thought it would be a fried pork chop, but it's actually grilled. Flavor is great and till very moist with just a bit of a chew. Popcorn Chicken (3.75/5): Texture wise, this is perfection - meat is super soft with a perfect crunch outside. Flavor wise, I unfortunately thought it was a little bland. Golden Buckwheat Tea (4/5): Expensive, but it was delicious. Super fragrant, not bitter at all, and just slightly sweet.

Ordered the beef noodle soup, beef tendon noodles, pork trotter rice bowl, and stinky tofu. The noodle soups had really good portions and the soup was not too salty. 9/10 The pork trotters in the rice bowl was sooo good! They were really tender and the pickles were well seasoned. 9/10 The stinky tofu wasn't as crispy as I thought they were going to be. I think the sauce they made balanced out the dryness of the tofu well. Slightly spicy but also has a sweet aftertaste. I did find a piece of hair stuck in the sauce though so that def brought my rating down a little. 8/10 The waitress was super nice though! She was really attentive and made sure we got our food quickly. She also made a lot of good recs for food and tea drinks. The restaurant had a lot of pictures of the owner on the wall which was really cute!

Parking for this area takes place around the same area as the Asian Family Supermarket and other nearby restaurants such as Nuodle and Spicy Popo, which is to say it gets unusually packed here despite a large parking lot. If you can make it, then this place is worth trying! My friend and I went here on a Friday weeknight and got seating pretty easily; the inside is very huge with plenty of tables and booths which can seat a lot of people. The menu consists of a large selection of foods, with one whole side of the menu nearly completely dedicated to milk teas and drinks, and the other side being the main entrees and dishes. From there, I got the MonGa combo, which comes with lu-rou fan (which s a Taiwanese pork rice bowl), pork meatball soup and two sides of my choosing, in which I chose a braised egg and pickled cucumbers. My friend got the same dish and a braised egg as one side but triangular tofu as the second side. Portions here aren't big, but everything tasted very homely, which was a relief given I had already eaten out quite a bunch! Pork meatball soup was just right in flavor, and the flavoring of the pork in the lu-rou fan wasn't too overwhelming either! The pickled cucumbers remind me of those made by Dough Zone in Chinatown, which is to say also very good! And braised egg was solid. There are similar restaurants like this around Bellevue (such as Looking for Chai) and it's easy to overlook this place given the presence of the other surrounding businesses where it is, but if you want something great and not too heavy, this is an ideal place to go to!

Taiwanese cafe in Bellevue, in the same plaza as Asian Family Market, and in the same row as a bunch of mostly Asian restaurants. The place is actually larger than it looks from the outside as the space is pretty deep. Casual cafe atmosphere. Decent number of customers for a Saturday night. Snagged a small table without having to wait. Menu is printed on one sheet of paper. Has a list of sweet teas, and Taiwanese favorites like the fried chicken pieces, chicken and pork cutlets. Also has some some noodle bowls. No personal hotpot/soups on the menu though. I got one of the teas and it was a nice refreshing drink for the sumer. $7. For food, I got the fried pork cutlet for like $16 and paid $2 extra to upgrade the rice to the lurou (marinated pork) rice. The pork cutlet is pretty big and comes with some veggies and half a marinated egg. Comes with a slight tart and sweet dipping sauce. Pork cutlet not the crispiest, but flavor was decent. The lurou rice has a richer flavor thanks to the pork sauce bits and sauce covering the rice. Overall, food was decent and portions are good for the price.

I don't know many Taiwanese restaurants in the area nor do I have a lot of experience eating a variety so I can't speak on how well their food stacks against other Taiwanese restaurants but I can say I really did the like dish I got, which if I recall correctly was their B3 Beef Shank Noodle Soup spicy: 3/5, sautéed fresh mustard greens, wontons in spicy oil, and peach black oolong milk tea. Their mustard greens tasted as expected from any Asian restaurant that does them, but their wontons in spicy oil was definitely one of my favorites compared to other places like Din Tai Fung. The peach black oolong milk tea was pretty good. Not too strong on the peach, not too sweet, and you get the dryness of the black oolong tea. If you want something really fruity, I wouldn't go for this, but the sweetness level was just what I wanted. The service was also great. Friendly and attentive staff. And probably the best part is walking into the restaurant and seeing the ethnicities people are actually working there along with the people eating were Asian. Not one none Asian was there at the time we went in and I knew it was going to be a good place. If you walk into a restaurant and don't see one person of that restaurants homeland working or eating there then don't expect much...

We were seated immediately as a walk-in and loved all the cool pictures on the wall. We ordered the beef noodle soup, popcorn chicken, and tofu. The chicken was crispy and flavorful, and the tofu was soft and juicy. The noodle soup had chewy noodles and a great broth. Delicious taiwanese food!

MonGa has been around for several years, located in the busy shopping plaza that also houses Asian Family Market. Parking is challenging in this plaza. I park as soon as I enter to secure a spot and walk the rest of the way. They completed an expansion recently. The interior is pleasantly spacious and simply decorated. They are understaffed for this expanded space. Three people take orders, while two people deliver food and clear tables. Getting the attention of any one of them is difficult. They are running around being very busy, so I don't fault the staff for the service. The food overall is quite good, which is confirmed by the groups waiting by the door and outside when we left. Thank goodness we came early. A tip: I noticed the online ordering has options that are not verbalized to us while we ordered nor is it included on the paper menu. I recommend cross-checking the online ordering to see if there are tweaks you want. For example, the pork burger can be fatty meat or lean meat. The Food: S1 - Pork Burger, 美味刈包, $6.49 - 4 Stars Hubby's eyeballs went very big looking at the thick slab of fatty pork belly. It has to be the thickest I have seen in a while, even though it is all fatty (see photo). Meanwhile, I feel my arteries tightening just looking at it. Well, he said it was delicious. B3 - Beef shank and tendon noodle soup, 半筋半肉麵, $14.49 - 4.5 Stars Flavorful beef broth, even if visually a bit thinner than other places. Hubby said it was good and the meat and tendon are tender. D2 - Noodles Topped with Vegetarian Meat Sauce, 香菇素肉麵, $11.49 - 4.5 Stars The English name doesn't say it, but the Chinese name says this dish is Chinese mushrooms and house-made vegetarian meat noodles. This dish is surprisingly tasty. The photo is pre-stir. The sauces are at the bottom and are plentiful to coat the entire dish. S3 - Popcorn chicken, 酥炸鹽酥雞, $9.99 - 4 Stars This is a perennial Taiwanese favorite dish. Their coating is lighter/thinner than most places. The simple salted flavor comes through well. They use dark meat, which is the traditional style. Triangle Fried Tofu, 三角油豆腐, $6.49 - 2 Stars Why is this wet? See photo. It makes no sense. They run off as soon as they put the dish down, so I just kept it since it's not expensive. It tastes ok, just not what I expected or wanted - which is crispy fried tofu. This was my backup after they said the stinky tofu is sold out. Bummer. Tieguanying Tea Latte, 鐵觀音拿鐵, $5.99 - 4 Stars With a surprisingly mild tea flavor and the Chinese style of not-too-sweet, this warm latte is quite milky and yummy.