Leeann Chin — Restaurant in Savage

This is a well-run quick-service restaurant that's reliably fast - with uniformly good food at a decent price.

I've been a LeeAnn Chin fan ever since I visited one of their first locations on Hennepin Ave. just south of the Walker Art Center about 20 years ago. The business model is simple: super fresh Asian entrees served in a clean, tastefully decorated environment. It worked then, and it still works today at this location in Savage, Minnesota.

This particular restaurant is well-managed and efficient. The staff is focused and works hard to get food to its customers quickly and with minimal fuss. You don't see employees standing around and staring at their phones or acting like bored pre-teens behind the counter.

The entrees turn over frequently, so you always get very fresh main dishes - the appetizers, not so much. In particular, the oyster wings always seem like they've been sitting around for a while - avoid them. Some of the entrees are better than others. Beef dishes tend to feature lesser quality cuts of meat, and it's not uncommon to find yourself chewing something gristle-y and unpleasant. The chicken entrees are noticeably better in quality - maybe because they're using a higher grade of meat as the starting point. Most entrees are available in meatless versions, but you have to make a special request. However, since vegetarian entrees are made to order, they're straight out of the kitchen fresh.

The thing that really makes LeeAnn Chin's food exceptional are the sauces. The flavors are distinct, robust, and authentic. This is not Panda Express, where every sauce tastes like every other sauce and basically appears to be a thin brownish gravy with only slight variations between styles. At LeeAnn Chin, the sauces are thick and the flavors are intense. If you're bothered by Asian cuisine that tastes like it came from Asia, perhaps you should be eating somewhere else.

The bottom line is that, unlike most other quick service restaurants in this area, LeeAnn Chin rarely disappoints. The staff is attentive, service is quick, and the entire restaurant has the vibe of a very slick,...

I've been coming to this restaurant regularly since they opened many years ago, and the food and service has been consistently good. But there's a guy working behind the counter for the past couple of months who's really creepy - he exhibits an unpleasant combination of passive aggressive snark and, increasingly, outright hostility. I'm a pretty polite person by nature, and I don't think I've done anything to set this guy off, but he's clearly got an agenda when it comes to customer relations and it's not pleasant to experience. I don't know if he's just a nasty human being or if he hates his job so much that he takes it out on his customers, but I don't think I'm going to be returning here anytime soon. The world is hostile enough, and I certainly don't need more of it when I go out to eat.

Also, there's been something off about the food here during my visits recently. I'm very familiar with how things taste here, and Leeann Chin sauces are nothing if not consistent. But I've noticed a significant change in how how things taste. It's as if the sauces are watered down or otherwise tainted by an adjunct ingredient. I ordered bourbon chicken and the chicken had a weird, pre-cooked consistency - like tough rubber - and grill marks that were clearly artificial. The bourbon sauce was flavorless and thin, and totally different than what I've had here in the past. Ditto for the peking chicken - oddly flavorless and the chicken was gristly and tough.

I haven't experienced these things at any of their other locations. I'm certainly going to avoid the Savage restaurant...

Ordered this past Monday 10/5/20 via the app ( first time using the app), my order was made at 6:56 pm and it said it would be ready at 7:10 pm. So I'm sitting in the parking lot waiting for an email or notification that my order is ready. I receive neither and go into the lobby at 7:09, there were 2 people in line to order and 1 employee helping them. There was another employee behind the counter on the right so I walk over to him and tell him I made an order in the app, he asks my name and then gives me a bag that was sitting there and said I already made that one. My order was 1 mongolian chicken entree with fried rice and 2 orders of cream cheese wontons, both items were barely warm and the wontons had no crisp to them ( likely because they were inside a little paper bag, inside a closed plastic bag for too long) because my order was ready before the quoted time. They were inedible so a waste of my money ☹️ and I had to reheat the rice, didn't reheat the chicken because we all know reheated breaded chicken sucks. Very disappointed using the app and the food I received.

I'm here again to edit my review. Todd (regional director of operations) contacted me and made things right. I'll continue to give them my business and bring others to...