Cafe Rio Fresh Modern Mexican — Restaurant in American Fork

Update: It has been a year since my last review and we decided to give this place another try. This time I came with my work colleges and the experience still deserves less than one star in our opinion. We half of us didn't get our meals when the others did because they were still cooking certain items, which would have been fine except for the items they were still making, long into the lunch services, were the specials of the day. Apparently, the specials are not as special as they may seem and they probably need to just throw in the towel if they can't even get that right. The place still still a mess. Counters aren't clean. Tables are a disaster. Might want to think about bringing your own Clorox wipes to clean your table off before you sit down because the staff couldn't care less.

Wouldn't recommend this place at all!

This restaurant is a perfect example of how Costa Vida is edging Café Rio out of the Mexican food business. I went to get a meal after working late around 10 o’clock. What I was greeted with was in the word shocking. The garbage cans inside the restaurant were overflowing and there was garbage all over the floor. In the restaurants defense there was a mop and bucket nearby however it looked too have been abandoned for quite some time as the mop had fallen over in the middle of the walkway. You had to step over it in order to get to the counter. Unfortunately when I reached the counter I was not greeted with anything better. The staff that prepared my meal didn’t seem to have a care in the world. My salad with sloppily thrown together and had dressing all over the Metal tin. When I asked if they would clean it off so that I could transport it in my car without having to get all over my seats they seemed to only be more put out than they were before. This is not the first time that I have been to this restaurant and it is not the first time that I have seen this sort of unfortunate circumstances. Over the years I have seen this restaurant only decline in the quality of their food and the quality of their staff. Hopefully when this restaurant goes out of business and move to another location another good and customer oriented business will take its place. If you ask me Your money would be better spent at the McDonald’s down the road.

Update: Come on Cafe Rio, even I know you can’t completely and properly clean lettuce unless you remove it from the base. To find it in my salad, tells me you didn’t take the time to properly clean my food. I just wish I had found it before eating almost...

I have always really liked the food at Cafe Rio and, until lately, always felt the service was great and the overall experience good. For the last few times, it is a totally different experience. The food still tastes good, IF YOU CAN GET YOUR ORDER. Due to COVID, we don't eat in restaurants currently but do a lot of take out. I have used the app repeatedly to order, where it still offers a curbside pickup option for the American Fork location that is closest to us. Nope! Don't expect the employees to actually do anything curbside. Whether or not you select curbside, you have to go in to get your food. OK, annoying that they offer a service they don't really do but not a deal breaker. When you complete your order you get a pickup time. Nope! Tonight I showed up a couple minutes after my pickup time for a curbside pickup. Of course, no one is working curbside so I went and checked in at the to go counter. My food was not ready but I was told they were making it and it would be ready soon. This was told to the next 3 people who came to check in for their "curbside" orders. Cafe Rio was not busy, in fact there were never more than 2 or 3 people in the order line at any time I was there and no to go orders were going out either. People walking in to order, start to finish, had their food within 5 or 10 min maximum. After 20 min, all 3 of us were still standing there waiting for food they hadn't even begun to prepare. The staff kept making food for those coming in and getting in the order line and skipping the to go orders. I only got my food by going and standing in the order line and ordering it again that way. One salad, not a big order. They had a total of nearly 50 min to prepare it from the time I ordered it through the app and ordered it again standing in line in store during a time when there were no more than 2 or 3 people waiting to order at any one time. And they knew we all were waiting for our orders that whole time! Terrible customer service. This is the most recent example, but is consistent with our last few experiences. I won't be returning to the American Fork location and if the other locations are this bad, I'm finished with Cafe Rio. There are plenty of other places to get good take out in a reasonable timeframe and with the bonus of basic consideration and customer service. UPDATE- eating the salad and just bit down on chicken...

I absolutely love Cafe Rio, but have had some of the worst experiences at this location.

My husband and I eat at Cafe Rio at least once a month, and the customer service has been steadily going downhill.

I have ordered the nachos 3 times, and not once has the order been correct. The first time, I ordered guacamole and sour cream on the side and didn't receive either item. The second time, there was no queso when we picked the food up, so my husband went back in to get it. Come to find out, they were completely out of queso because 'someone forgot to put an order in for it' that week. Instead of telling us so that I could change my order, they sold the nachos to us and then proceeded to pretend that I didn't even order queso. The third time I ordered nachos, I checked them before I left and again, there was no queso. So we went to the register and stood there and waited for around 15 minutes before any of the employees even acknowledged we were standing there. We told them about the queso, and they then proceeded to charge us for the queso that should have already been on the nachos. We then had to argue that we shouldn't have to pay extra for something we had already paid for. They finally realized what we were trying to tell them and refunded the money they charged us for the queso. At this point our food was cold and yucky and we were frustrated.

Also, ordering through the app is a joke. We ordered food about an hour before closing, and we went to pick it up it wasn't ready by the time we had put on the app. So we waited. In the time it took them to fill our online order, they had helped at least 8 people through the regular line. Why bother ordering ahead of time through the app if it's going to take more time than just waiting in line? This is not the first time this has happened either. Also, the order was incorrect, and we ended up with someone else's salad in with our food. I'm not impressed with this location at all.

We will be taking our businesses to another location...