Fried Rice Express — Restaurant in Salt Lake City

Come on. How hard is it to cook decent Chinese food? This real estate is not cheap. So... I don't understand why any entrepreneur would choose THIS location to open such a low-quality, banal, profitless, pointless restaurant. This spot used to be a Rumbi's... and it was always spot on back then. (I think COVID killed the Rumbi's--though I think they still have locations open in other areas.) If PANDA EXPRESS can make better Chinese food than you do... why stay open? I ordered some kind of daily lunch special... which was supposed to be some kind of stir fried chicken with vegetables, rice, and a drink. No eggroll included--which I found odd for a lunch special--so I ordered one on the side--but I asked the one-woman-band who was working the joint if it was a decent sized eggroll (for $3) or small. She said it was big. It was not. It was small, and generic and flavorless. Tasted like something you'd buy frozen at the grocery store and heat up in a microwave--but not even THAT good.

The chicken was supposed to be "Teriyaki" but it was flavorless also--completely uninspired--an afront to to Chinese person on the planet. Trust me, I was not expecting mind-blowing Chinese food in a strip center on 4th south. But I was so under-whelmed--even going in with very low expectations. The overall vibe of the place is shabby and sad. I was the ONLY customer the entire time I was there ordering and waiting for my food... and it was LUNCHTIME. That should have been a clue. Every other food place in that complex had a lunch queue... this place was a ghost town. Nobody even ordering take out or delivery. Nada.

Don't waste your time or your money at this place. McDonald's would be a...

Coming from an East Asian background, I already have low expectations for Asian cuisine in the US. This is beyond low. Given, it could be preferences. However, I got Beef Stir-Fried Udon and Thai Milk Tea Boba Tea. The beef are so overcooked that it's chewy and dry. I've never had wetter Stir-Fried noodles than this. The entire bottom of the container is covered in a quarter inch of water/sauce/fluid. Not only that, the Thai Tea was extremely bitter, and it tastes more like green tea than Thai Tea: making me think that they heavily diluted the Thai tea with green tea, Thai tea is a type of black tea and have a very different taste and profile than green tea. That aside, the boba is extremely overcooked, either overcooked or I was served with leftover boba, it just melts in your mouth, which should not ever happen with boba. I just cannot imagine messing up boba like this. I have cooked boba in my own home before and it didn't even get this bad. I have higher expectations for the cooks who are Asians themselves to know how to cook Asian cuisine. Alas, I was hugely mistaken. I had some expectations for food and drinks that are priced in this range, and they failed to meet even the baseline of those...

I ordered Sesame Chicken and fried rice, but I got someone else's order. When my Dasher arrived (Ordered through door dash) the restaurant called the Dasher, and said that they had two people with my same name order food, and they sent the wrong order to the wrong person. Fried Rice Express asked the Dasher to give me his phone so they could speak with me. The person I spoke to was very rude, and said that I would just have to eat what was sent. The Dasher offered to take it back but the restaurant told him they couldn't do that, and I could have what was sent. I tried to eat what they sent, but as it was not what I wanted, I couldn't eat it. I tried to call back to speak to a manager and hopefully get an apology, but they would answer and tell me that a manager wasn't available and hang up. They did this twice. When I was able to speak to someone again, it was the first guy again, and he told me I would have to deal with DoorDash, not them. This does not seem right because it wasn't Doordash that messed up, it was the restaurant. They are rude and unprofessional, and the food I was able to eat of the messed up order was not that great anyway. STAY AWAY FROM THESE...