Steve E.'s Profile

Never been to a Mimi's Cafe before, but my wife and I decided to go tonight. We got off to a very slow start at this location. It took a little long to be greeted at the door. We were first seated at a booth that was too cramped, then reseated in the sparsely inhabited dining room at a half booth/half table. The chairs were a tight squeeze and appeared to be the only ones in the restaurant with arms. I moved over to the booth side to sit next to my wife and was comfortable from then on.

Good thing, since no one seemed to be in the mood to be our server. Apparently, as was explained later, the person running the front changed around who was serving what table and didn't bother to tell the servers.

Once we finally got a server, things went much better. We got our drinks, appetizer, and soups quickly.

The soup, clam chowder (Friday's soup du jour) was rich, thick, and flavorful. Our appetizer, spinach and artichoke dip, fit that description as well.

Our entrees were also quite good. My wife had the tilapia which was cooked quite well and was moist and tender. The vegetables tasted fresh and not overcooked. The mashed potatoes were quite good as was my chicken cordon bleu, though the chicken was a little overdone. Moist and tender on the inside, but too crunchy on the outside.

After the apology over the serving mix up and the long wait, the night went smoothly. Our server, Tom, was personable and we enjoyed watching him interact with another customer's child.

We'll be back at some point to try other things on the interesting menu. Might even save room for a dessert.

I've never eaten here before and never eaten Ethiopian food before, but my experience today will have me going back for more!

First off, ignore the menu on their website. The prices there are higher than they are in the restaurant and the menu is changed just a bit.

I went with a couple of friends who've been there before. The first thing you notice when you open the door is the combination of aromas that greet you. It's just a tantalizing teaser of what's to come.

For my first experience with this cuisine, I chose the sampler to get a taste of some of the different foods. In fact, we all chose the sampler. The meat and vegetarian dishes we chose were nice and spicy, flavorful, and gone within a few minutes. The use of the injera bread rather than utensils was actually a little bit of a challenge at first, but made perfect sense and worked quite well with the food we had.

The spices may be a bit too hot for some folks, especially those with uncontrolled acid reflux. Since mine's under control, I just went to town.

You can see from other reviews about the BYOB policy, the process of eating, the serving methods, etc. Just wanted to post yet another positive review of this deserving restaurant. Looking forward to going back there.

I rarely send food back to the kitchen to be cooked more and I've never had to send food back twice... until tonight.

So why 4 stars? We'll get to that.

When my wife and I first arrived, the place was pretty well packed. Yes, there were tables open, but the greeters were out of menus and had to wait for some to make their way back to the front desk before we could be seated. The greet staff appeared overwhelmed. When we were seated, the person who guided us to our seat (Jason?) didn't really seem to care much about what he was doing.

We had to wait for a bit for a server to show up, but Amy got our drink order and our appetizer order quickly once she made it to our table. The loaded potato skins appetizer was quite good.

We put in our dinner order and got our salads shortly after the appetizer arrived. And this is where things started falling apart. My wife's green salad was fine, but my Caesar salad wasn't as green as it should have been. The iceberg lettuce was turning brown.

Not that we had a lot of time to consider our salads since the entrees arrived very quickly. We both had steaks and baked potatoes. The potatoes were big and fluffy and quite well baked.

The steaks on the other hand... PJ ordered hers medium and I ordered mine medium well. They were both medium rare at best. Hers actually looked rare. We flagged down Amy who was surprised the steaks had shown up so quickly and so obviously undercooked. She apologized and took the steaks back to be cooked more.

Chris, the manager, soon showed up to apologize for the inconvenience and to thank us for our patience. I mentioned the brown lettuce to him and he took the offending salad away. He offered to bring something in place of the salad, but I declined.

The steaks came back and this time... they were maybe medium rare. Maybe. I told Amy the kitchen was making the restaurant look bad. She once again apologized profusely, seemed genuinely upset on our behalf, and took both steaks to Chris. He came by and this time started out by saying he was embarrassed. We mentioned that we'd been at the restaurant in the past and had very good experiences before, but it seemed like this was a really "off" night for them.

He agreed that something had gone off the rails and graciously comped our meals.

The steaks arrived again, but not the same ones. They cooked new steaks for us and this time they were just right. Amy stuck around to be sure as we cut into the middle of both our steaks to check them. They were flavored perfectly, cooked perfectly, and we ended up having a nice meal.

Chris gets points for dealing with us both times things went wrong and for crouching down to our eye level for the second apology and taking responsibility for the mistakes. Completely comping the meals was an unexpected and welcomed gesture. He also went out of his way to make sure we understood that Amy wasn't to blame (we knew that, but it was nice to see a manager have his employee's back like that).

Amy gets points for showing her concern for our satisfaction and for being just as baffled as we were over the obvious poor quality of the preparation of the steaks. Meat shouldn't be red on steaks done medium or above, and the first two were red through and through.

Both of them thanked us for our understanding and for not losing our cool (yes, PJ has mellowed me that much over the years). We got Amy to laugh a bit and she got us to laugh as well by asking if she could get us an "undercooked dessert" with a perfect deadpan expression. She earned her 20%+ (before the comp) tip.

So, even though we had an adventure of poorly timed food service, confused employees, and undercooked food, Amy and Chris went out of their way to make things right, and whoever cooked the new steaks for us showed us what we knew the kitchen was capable of doing. They screwed up, but they took responsibility and handled the situation quickly and professionally. That's why they get 4 stars for what could have been a 2 star performance or worse.

On our way out of Red Rock country, my wife and I wanted to find some place to eat and found this restaurant just before heading back to I-17. Actually, we turned into the parking lot to go to another restaurant, but they weren't due to open for a few hours. We then found Cafe Jose.

My wife had the fish and chips and I had the BBQ beef sandwich. The fish and chips had very generous portions of reasonably well cooked fish. My BBQ beef sandwich was as advertised, roasted beef with barbecue sauce. Fries were good on both platters.

Service was very attentive and the staff seemed to care about what they were doing.

Overall great service, decent food, good prices, and reasonably easy to find even if we were enticed by another restaurant's sign before we happened upon this place.

Even on one of the hottest days of the year in Phoenix, this place had spots that were considerably cooler making it a pleasant morning hike. It's probably a lot nicer during cooler weather.

The volunteers that greeted us were wonderful. They gave us some background on the preserve, invited us to have a look around inside, and gave us insights as to what we'd find when we got to the trails. Since it was our first time there, a volunteer guide took us to a specific point and gave us even more background and information. He helped us map out our first hike and sent us on our way.

There's a large variety of trees throughout the preserve and a few places with water (a pond and a small portion of a river). The trails we went on were reasonably easy to navigate and had many places to sit and take in our surroundings or even wait around for birds or other animals to cross our paths.

We did get to see some lizards and a few birds along the way and we're looking forward to going back for more in the near future and for years to come.

Photographers will want to bring their zoom and macro lenses. Everyone else might want to bring a decent pair of binoculars.

The visitor center has educational displays, brochures for the area and for other Nature Conservancy areas throughout Arizona, restrooms, water and soda for sale, and wonderful volunteers who will help in any way they can.

After hiking around the Hassayampa River Preserve, my wife and I decided to head to Wickenburg for lunch. We'd eaten in other places in the area before so we decided to try something different.

The service was quick and very attentive. The food was OK and pretty standard "cowboy" fare. The salad was OK though the veggies were a bit tired looking. My Western Bacon Cheeseburger was quite good. The fried chicken was a bit overdone and dry, especially the breast though the thigh and leg were moister. The fries were also quite good.

Bonus: breakfast and dinner are served all day.

Decor is a mix of animal heads, antlers, antiques, and western artwork.

They do have the silly "Freedom Fries" listed on their menu, though our waitress called them "French Fries" and Fox News was on the TV, though that was changed to ESPN as we were preparing to leave. Would have expected country music rather than having any news channel playing.

Restrooms could have used some work, or at least an air freshener.

Overall not a bad place to get a decent lunch.

Went on a business lunch and my dining companions and I had a great time with great food and service. A few folks had the tortilla soup and enjoyed it immensely. My chicken taquitos combo was very good. Didn't hear a bit of complaining from anyone at lunch and I was dining with several people who eat there quite often.

Hard to add anything to the rest of the reviews here, but my wife and I were very happy we found this place, though we wish we'd found it just a little earlier in the day as we felt a little rushed at the end of our meal since it was closing time.

That aside, the service was friendly and attentive. Our orders were absolutely right and well prepared using obviously fresh ingredients. Nice feature was how the salads were automatically served with dressing on the side, not on the salads.

We'll be in the area again soon and will very likely be back.

A little tough to find, but well worth it! My wife and I took a day trip from Phoenix on our honeymoon to visit the park for the first time and absolutely loved it.

Aside from the size and quality of the habitats, we were able to get fairly close to most of the animals. They all appeared healthy and very well cared for. The staff was very engaging and really seem to care not only about the animals but about the people visiting the park.

There are lots of different events that you can see or not, but I do highly recommend the safari bus tour. You'll get to see some animals close up and you'll even get to feed a giraffe and a camel.

You can also feed tigers from behind a cage and you can watch the predators eat on certain days if that's your thing.

Observation stations at most of the exhibits are a shutterbug's dream giving safe and unobstructed views of many of the big animals.

You can walk or take any of the free trams to get where you want to go in the park. If you plan on going more than once to the park in a year and don't want a full membership, there's a great option of getting a card that allows unlimited admission (without the membership bells and whistles) for $20 for a year with full price general admission of $36.

Edited May 12, 2012 to add:

You get a safari tour with your paid admission. While all the tour guides are quite good, you'll get a special treat with Courtney at the wheel of the safari bus. She's even more personable and funny than the other safari guides, and that's saying something.

I saw a recent review from someone worried about these African animals being "hungry (they're fed very well and it shows if you just look at the animals), filthy (it's a desert -- what isn't filthy?), and miserable while baking in the hot Arizona sun (the animals are natives of African deserts and savannahs. Where it's hot. Hotter than northern Arizona), I have only this to say:

The people working there are passionate about caring for the animals and teaching people about them. If you're an animal lover, you'll very much relate to the folks there and appreciate what they do for the animals who are well cared for.

My wife and I made a reservation for 15-20 people for an after party following our wedding and reception this past weekend. The reservation was ready as requested. Good thing, too, since we had 19 people in attendance and the restaurant was absolutely packed.

The service was quite slow to start, but once it got going it went well. The food came out reasonably quickly for such a packed restaurant. Our server was friendly and even complimented us at the end of the meal for being such a fun group to deal with.

Our group had a good time, very good food, and decent service. About the only problem we had aside from the slow start to the service was the noise level as there were quite a few birthday celebrations throughout which required several servers to sing and clap loudly. It was a little disturbing for people in our party with sensitive hearing, though we all appreciated the friendly party atmosphere.