Zero Degrees — Restaurant in Aurora

Zero Degrees meets expectations despite the overwhelming social media hype.

I was definitely worried that Zero Degrees would just be "meh," due to the crazy volume of hype it receives all over social media. Zero Degrees is an asian-hispanic fusion franchise, with multiple locations all over the west mainly including California, Nevada, Texas, and more. Fortunately, Zero Degrees met its high bar for its delicious (although on the sweeter side) drinks and fun menu items!

Beware, Zero Degrees is not the place for anyone on a diet. They offer various decked out smoothies/slushes with beautiful presentations, classic boba milk tea drinks, hot cheetos elotes, loaded fries, and chicken wings.

Let's start with the drinks. You can get either: a) A very instagram worthy smoothie - ube, cookie monster, mangonada (don't forget to add the mango twist!), watermelon slush, or a pink lychee drink. You can get these in a normal cup, or if you're feeling fancy, purchase a jar. These are what you most often see all over social media, I'm gonna have to come back to try the famous ube milkshake with its unicorn esthetic.

b) A tea! Now this is what I had to get because of course I have to compare their classics to other local boba shops. I was pleased to see Zero Degrees offers honey boba and sea foam. I got the strawberry horchata with boba in a split cup with the matcha milk tea with sea foam. My friend got the thai milk tea with the lychee crush green tea which I tried. I must say that my favorite is definitely the strawberry horchata with the strawberry chunks. The lychee crush was quite good as well, with the added texture of chia seeds. The matcha milk tea is also decent, but I'm definitely all for continuing to try their different teas. I couldn't really taste the foam, but it may just be because there's less foam volume in the split cup. The teas here are definitely on the sweet side, but I'm not sure if you can request a "less sweet" level. Split cups are great for all those indecisive people!

c) Hot snacks... and these are loaded! You better bring a friend to share! (or if not, no judgement, haha). Portions are large. They have hot cheetos elotes, carne asada fries, chicken wings, fried shrimp, and more. I shared the duo elotes which was half covered with jalapeno cheddar cheeto dust and half covered with xxtra flamin hot dust. We liked the xxtra hot flamin' half much better. When you crush up hot cheetos into dust, it's really not as spicy as the actual cheetos. I do wish they had mini size so you could get a little "side" of elotes or something, because this is something you can definitely sick of eating after so many bites.

d) Box combos - these are pretty cool because you can get a hot snack with fries and drink!

Five stars for awesome drinks! Don't forget to pick up a punch card, because you will...

I've honestly never written a bad (and long) review before until this point. My friend and I decided to check this place out after seeing all the hype online and from friends. We ended up waiting an hour in line to get food, which we thought was fine, since it was around dinner rush hour. After we ordered, it took around 15 minutes to get us our food, the chicken was okay and the fries were soggy. But as we finished the food, we still hadn't gotten our drinks. At this point it had been a good 30 minutes. As someone who works in customer service, I understand how hard it is for a new resturant to establish a system, and how hard it is to manage everything during rush hour. But this place was a total MESS. When I went up there to ask about my drink after 40 minutes of waiting, the girl at the cashier had forgot to write the corresponding order numbers on cups, the said cups were in a massive pile with no regard to order or time, and there was a jumble of people complaining about where their drinks were. The workers were grabbing random cups to make drinks as they liked, and people who were waiting longer than I have were still there waiting. I have never felt so much cringe watching these people work. Then when I thought things couldn't get worse, the lady in the front appearently couldn't find my cup? She legit had to get me a new cup and make my order in front of me because she knew I'd been waiting so long already. The most disappointing part was that after 2 hours of waiting, the drink I had gotten was mediocre at best, and not worth the $6 price tag. The strawberry limeade boba tasted nothing like a strawberry limeade, and the mango green tea only tasted like sugar. The pina colada was okay, but what isn't okay was the amount of disorder I witnessed, and the quality of the food. If you wanna check this place out, I'd definitely reconmmend you don't, or you wait until they figure out how...

My girlfriend and I were so excited to try this place out. We went on a Thursday around 2pm and the line was still out the door. After 30 minutes we finally made it up to the (only) register to take our order. The lady at the register asked what we wanted and as soon as I began talking she told me to “hold on” and turned to her coworker and started carrying a conversation with her. After a few minutes she returned to me and took my order. We ordered food and a smoothie, and waited about 15 minutes to get our smoothie. At his this point we had been there for 45 minutes total. After ANOTHER 45 minutes we still don’t have our food and neither does anyone else. Finally an employee comes out and announces that they had not been receiving any of the food orders from the last hour (which baffles me. Did they just assume that no one was ordering food for an entire hour while the restaurant was consistently packed wall-to-wall?). Another 45 minutes go by and we still don’t have our food. At this point I have talked to a manager twice (and I’m really not the kind of guy to do that, but at this point I just wanted to get out of there). They keep telling me they’ll check on our order but I hear nothing from them. After another 15 minutes we finally get our food. And it was SO MEDIOCRE! The fries were wet from grease, the portions were tiny, and the hot fries looked and tasted like something I would’ve made at home at 3am. All in all we were there for 2 and a half hours. I googled their location today and saw that this is a VERY common occurrence for patrons of this establishment. I also saw that it said they’re permanently closed, so I called them and asked if they were still open. The employee I spoke to told me their hours and hung up on me mid-sentence. Go figure. I pray that this restaurant goes out of business so that no one has to go through such a terrible...