Miceli's Italian Restaurant

Miceli's Italian Restaurant
3655 Cahuenga Blvd W
Los Angeles
323-851-3344

I'll be honest, I am not a fan of Italian food. I think most are just overpriced crap. I mean most Italian food is just sauce and pasta. Who can really screw that up? I consider Miceli's a decent place to go to, a step above Olive Garden. The big draw of Miceli's is the performing servers. They perform every night they are open.


I went for lunch, so no performances, and ordered the lasagna, $11.95. The lasagna had three cheeses, beef, pasta & meat sauce. This was pretty good but the lasagna was undercooked. It wasn't al dente, just a little under. Now I understand things can happen but damn, when an Italian place can't get the pasta right, what is going on?

I thought the beef and cheese was good. But the meat sauce was just too tangy and sour for my tastes. It was weird to find actual bay leaves in the lasagna. They need to be taken out since bay leaves are not to be eaten.

Service was OK. When I ordered the lasagna, the server asked me if I wanted cheese on that. I was said "I thought it came with cheese?" She said it comes with cheese but if I wanted cheese on top, it would be extra. I told her no. That question was stupid and what is more stupid is charging extra for more cheese.

I would not go back to Miceli's again. The food is very average, I mean I think the frozen lasagna from Stouffers is better and I can get an entire tray for less than one small portion from Miceli's.

Cafe Sierra

Café Sierra
555 Universal Dr.
Universal City
818-509-2030

WOW talk about a seafood buffet. For $39.99, Cafe Sierra offers a great seafood buffet. Lobster thermador, king crab legs, shrimp, prime rib, all kinds of good stuff. Cafe Sierra is in the Universal Hilton Hotel. For the seafood buffet that is offered Friday and Saturday, they basically put buffet tables outside Cafe Sierra and have people sit all over. Our table gave us a great view of the parking lot.

The first food pictured is the king crab legs. They are served cold but are sweet and tender. Oh soooo good. They are already cut in half, ready for you to dig in. This was so great, I went back 2-3 times. The crab legs alone is worth the price.

The next picture is the prime rib and the lobster thermador. Since this was all you can eat, I just ate the tail. They were sweet and tender. The prime rib was rare. But with any buffets, it depends when you get the food. The prime rib was pretty tender and juicy. Maybe one of the better examples of buffet prime rib.

The next picture is the albacore and the beef rib. The beef rib was pretty bad. Not much meat and it was very tough. I loved the albacore. They put the albacore in a brown gravy, with tons of mushrooms. This was sooo good. I put it over rice. The albacore was tender and there were huge, I mean huge pieces of albacore.

Their famous shark fin soup is pictured next. It was thicken with lots of tapicoa. I've hadn't had shark fin soup enough to know, if they shredded pieces of meat were the real shark fin or not. But this was very good.

The next picture is the assortment of crab. They had duness crab, which had a ton of meat and was tasty and some of the king crab legs. The crab was served cold. The best thing about the crab is that they were not salty at all. Many places use a very salty brine to boil the crab. Cafe Sierra does it right.

The next picture is medium to large size, peel and eat shrimp. These were firm, tender and tasty. The cocktail sauce had a nice kick to it and added to the flavor.

I love Cafe Sierra. There are many other items served during the buffet. But it gets to be too much. I just worked on eating the king crab, lobster and prime rib. Service was good though our server answered her own questions. "Do you need any more drinks?" No, thank you." But she was attentive after she asked us twice what we wanted to drink.

I would go back to Cafe Sierra anytime.