Zao Asian Cafe — Restaurant in Lehi

Avoid this location. I surely won't be back any time soon. I checked how long the line is before going inside. There were 2 people in line (with 3 employees working the line plus the cook) I figured it would be maybe 5 minutes to get an order. I waited 15 minutes. No apologies for the wait. And a few issues with my order. Defintely some new employees. The cook was super busy and working hard. The line employees seemed to all be new and slow and making mistakes. Avoid this location. Suggestions for management: Suggestion 1: when 1 person is waiting in line and you have 7 "Online" orders to make, try helping the person in line first. Or perhaps do every other (e.g., one online order, then one in person order, the one online order.) But proceeding to make all 7 online orders before helping the people in line just makes the people in line impatient and feel ignored. Especially when most of those "online" orders were not picked up when I left the restaurant and didn't need to be done so they could sit on the shelf. This is particularly true when the line has grown to 9 people and you're still not helping any people who are waiting to order but you're finishing the online orders first. BAD EXPERIENCE. Suggestion 2: Train your employees to be careful about touching their glasses or hat with their gloves on and then touching people's food with those same gloves. If you really need to touch your glasses or hat, then replace your gloves before touching people's food. It's even worse if the only reason you touched your gloves/hat is because you felt like you had nothing to do because there was a bottleneck in the line. I watched this employee touch their hat and glasses. I didn't care too much because my food was all being handled with serving spoons. But then the employee got confused with which order was which and started adding more ingredients to my completed order instead of the order she was supposed to be working on. And when I said I didn't want carrots (simply because they had been put on my order by mistake doesn't mean I wanted them) then it's gross to use your same gloves you just touched your head with to touch my food I'm about to eat. If I'd put two-and-two together before leaving the restaurant I would have either had them remake my entire order or walked out without paying. As it was, I was 5+ miles away before I remembered what she'd done. Suggestion 3: If someone had to wait 5+ minutes when there were no people ahead of them in line, when you finally decide to help that person, apologize for the wait. It goes a long way. Either that or explain, "I'll be with you in a moment" or SOMETHING instead of just ignoring your customer that is 4 feet away from you for 5+ minutes. Suggestion 4: Have the employees pay a little attention to portion control. The corn was almost empty and the new corn wouldn't be ready for a few minutes. Noticing this, it seems odd to give someone 2x the normal amount of corn (that they didn't ask for) and have to tell the next person that you're out of corn and will need to wait several more minutes for your meal if you want it. Kudos to the cook who knew what he was doing and was...

TLDR: Free meals for kids through Aug 24! Flies. Good staff. Decent food.

The tricky part with the free kids meals is that you have to type the promo code yourself on the card reader. The young woman at the register could have spoken a bit clearer, but missing it was my honest mistake. Resolving it was a bit trickier. Eventually the staff canceled the transaction and gave us the meal for free. It seems manually entering the promo code is an unnecessary step, but the staff handled this situation well.

While in line I counted at least 7 flies in the serving area. You can see three on the pictured menu boards.

And the food: It always tastes a bit burnt to me, but it seems that’s just how they always cook their corn — maybe not ‘authentic’ but just intentional… Aside from that, it’s decent food and portions.

Pre-COVID, I never had good luck with their catering and neither did my wife — ordering on multiple occasions for local companies....

I love this place. I love the food. I eat here very frequently & it has always been great. Until last night when I got home, my tofu tacos had only 4-5 pieces of tofu on each taco. Not to mention the lack of lettuce & carrots, in which is always more than plenty. Every other time I’ve ordered these tacos , they have always had at least 8-12+ pieces & a great amount of veggies. It felt more of a roll up vs a taco. I’m not one to usually complain, but this was just a bummer. I even heard an employee tell another employee to put “just a little bit”. I’m not sure if it’s new management, but I just wanted to point it out in case that isn’t the new normal. If that’s the case, I will no longer be going to this location...