Pei Wei Asian Kitchen — Restaurant in Chandler

7/23/25 review- great service and food was cooked perfectly. The manager and cooks took my celiac disease / wheat allergy seriously. Great experience.

3 years ago review 5 stars: Jessica the manager took good care of my allergy concerns. I think Pedro (a cook) works at his location. He is great. And the restaurant was spotless. Very clean and organized.

4 years ago review 1 star: I hope my experience is just a fluke, as we all have bad days.

Me and my family went for grandma's 90th birthday today, a seemingly slow Tuesday around 4 pm.

My experience:

Dirty women's bathroom. Door handle was disgusting, with a dirt circle and finger prints all around the handle. It looked like it had been there for awhile. Dirty steel accessories, like paper towel holder, sink, handles. Toilet paper holders were empty, besides a stack of 6 covered rolls on top of the holders. And one was open, so they probably knew the holders were empty. I put the open roll on a holder.

The only thing that was clean was the toilet seat and bowl. So that was nice, at least.

Dirty tables and floor.

Manager (Katelyn?) was nonchalant about my celiac allergies. She said it was fully taken care of, but then, after I had eaten most of my meal, at the bottom of my plate was a pineapple piece - and pinapple is not in the dish I ordered.

That is a scary thing for celiac, for cross contamination. Because my food is supposed to be made separately from all other food.

To her credit I talked to her and it seemed the cook thought it was a different dish at first...

So I don't trust this location for my celiac. Other Pei Wei locations have taken extreme caution for me, and don't act nonchalant, especially when a mistake is made.

Then a super rude girl cleared our table. (No one took a dish off the table until we were leaving). And the girl who did, took my dish that we were getting a to-go container for, and stacked it under glutenned plates. My husband had just asked her where the to-go containers were. And then she immediately started stacking my plate that still had stuff on it.

I stopped her and got my plate back and she was super rude, and puffed off, bumping into me as I got my plate back. No apology just super rude. I would have apologized, if positions were switched. I don't know if she meant to bump into me, but no apology for that either. I think I apologized, and she never said a word to me. Just huffed off.

To my credit, I usually give a tip to the people that clean the table and deliver food. She didn't come to check on us or take plates. And her attitude was a huge disappointment.

I will not be going there for awhile.

And I really dislike writing negative reviews like this. :/ It makes my stomach churn. But this was my experience, and that is why reviews are important.

I really hope it was just an off-moment for...

I walked in what I thought I would see was correct. An almost empty dining room. A more empty parking lot and this is Monday at noon on a work day. Before Pei Wei was purchased by a private equity firm It was good food under p.f Chang's.

But like all private equity firms, they want to maximize profits, minimize waste and streamline everything. The downside of that is when you streamline food that tastes better with the preparation you lose product and more importantly you lose customers. Long gone is the Vietnamese chicken salad rolls which were extremely healthy and good to eat. They were expensive and I was willing to pay the price for them but from what I understand from the staff that I spoke to a while back is that it took too much time to prepare and that the upper management didn't like the manpower put into this product. Since I don't work for the company, I can't verify that 100%, but it feels about right.

I've used the term before the pandemic. Everything has started to taste like everything and that's because so many private equity firms own so many fast food places. It's truly a heartbreaking thing to see. My kids used to love to go to Subway but now they view it with disdain. Instead they go to Jersey Mike's which right now is pursued by private equity firms to take over and I truly hope they don't do it.

I did go inside. I did look at the menu and everything was almost a slight variation of everything. Why have more ingredients when the same ingredients can go into different name dishes but they're all basically using the same sauce or a slightly different protein.

This review is not against the staff or the management of this location. They can't help it. This is a job that they do and I'm sure they do it well. But the people at the top are the people counting the pennies they simply don't care. This is just another product line that I do not see surviving another 10 years.

I go out of my way now to make sure that I know of every privately owned deli and business. If I'm going to spend money there, I wanted to go to someone's dream and not some giant monolith eating machine that doesn't embrace a community but simply exists within the boundaries and leaves no legacy.

Good...

Edit 12-10-21. I will no longer come here. I excused the order mistakes because ultimately food is okay. Today, my order was supposed to be ready at 6:05. It is 7:10 and I was told it would have been at least 10 more minutes. Odds are it wouldn’t have been another 10 minutes and having all three of my kids with me, I cancelled my order and just picked something up on my way back.

This place has gone way down hill and it’s unfortunate.

Original review- I’ve been going here for years, and have always enjoyed it. Up until recently, that is. The last five orders I’ve made for pick up on the app, yes five orders, have all been wrong. After each of the first four, I thought oh well, it probably won’t happen again. I was wrong.

The receipt always had the correct order, the food had just been wrong.

Today, once again, I brought my food home and discovered it was incorrect. I tried to call ahead to let them know so they can prepare it, but after getting disconnected twice and being on hold, for 15 minutes, it didn’t work. I got everything packed up, got in my car and drove to Pei wei before they picked me off hold. I hung up (still on hold) as I walked in the door. I expected to see a line, and there was no one. Yes there were people eating, but no one by the employee by the phone.

So after driving back, reordering, waiting, driving back home, we are now able to sit down and eat our food at 6:10pm (original order was a 5pm pickup).

Also, my new order of ‘well done’ meat is not well done in the slightest way. I’m just gonna deal with it.

There is a serious quality control issue here.

Bummer that I won’t be coming back. Thankful there are many other restaurants in the area.

Edit: it’s 2 stars because I actually do like the food.

Update 6/18/21: nothing has changed. Order still incomplete every time since past review. Not some or most orders, every single one...