Chef Gao Orem

Reviews 5

RO

Rod Schiffman

Update: Chef Gao still satisfies on all levels. Theyve settled down, and become part of the local dining landscape. Ive been back a number of times, including dinner several times. Ive ordered more traditional food, and the full on Americanized food. Its all good. Even the most pedestrian dishes are better than other places around town. They now give you a fortune cookie at the end of the meal as well. Its easy to forget how large the dishes are, and we always order too much. However, it makes nice lunch, or dinner the next day. Original: Chinese in Utah County, who would have guessed. Those other places you were going to mention dont count. Only this one does. Now we just need people filling the place. This is as close as Id want to the real thing. And yes, I have been through big chunks of China and Tibet. This is supposed to be Mandarin and Szechuan, and that is what the menu is all about. More Szechuan perhaps. The opportunity presented itself for lunch. It was a bit puzzling. I assumed you picked something for $5.95, $6.95, or $7.95 and you get the soup, rice, spring roll, and entree on a plate. However, there were 50 choices. Thats nuts. It turns out Its just a smaller version of the dinner served family style. Theres a small cup of lukewarm egg drop to start. That didnt bode well. The rest of the food was excellent. No spring roll, just a shared rice bowl and dishes of food. I was with two others, so we did some sharing. Everything said about the Spicy Boiled Fish is true. Hot, spicy, meltingly tender pieces of fish. The broth is something to try sparingly. Its super strong, oily, and intense. There is an overwhelming background flavor of something very salty/pungent. Not bad, but it limits how much I want to put down my gob. I still ate more than I should. The scallion lamb was not listed as spicy, but even it had pieces of red pepper that created an underlying bit of spice. However, it was just fine for my wife that is hot spice adverse. The Shrimp with Garlic Sauce was indeed exactly as advertised. Finally, it is authentic in the odd service and no fortune cookie. This is not the place Ill be bringing my parents who want mild Chinese American, but for the rest of us, its a great addition to Utah County. One caveat, it does appear that they have more familiar Chinese American available too, it just wasnt on the lunch menu. Dont let this review scare you if you want Chicken with Cashews. Dinner is equally as good. I just wish I could get a beer to go with it.

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KE

Ken C

Ive been going to Chef Gao / Sweet Ginger for years. I will not come back to the Orem location ever again. Buyer Beware: TL;DR : Son is embarrassed because he took his father out for Fathers day to a garbage restaurant with garbage food, which sucks because it used to be amazing. 1. Food took 45 minutes to come out. There was a total of 10 other people and 4 servers. 2. Big long black hair in one of our plates of food. I asked to get a new plate, they shrugged said no. 3. They changed the meat they used in the Mongolian Beef. It used to be savory pieces of beef with veggies. They must have started using beef they bought from the dollar store. Really low grade beef. 4. Servers and hosts are wearing sweatpants and Crocs sandals. That cant be sanitary, safe, or professional looking. 5. Nobody came to check on how the food was. Not for the whole hour we were eating. 6. Nobody came to refill the water. Ever. 7. When we finally stopped a server to get the check, by stepping in their path, we finally got a check. They asked if wed like a box. A reasonable request. Then we waited for another 10 minutes for the box. Was the waiter busy? Was there a rush? Nope. The server was just hanging out at the service desk with his head in the clouds. We finally got our check. Please dont make the same mistake we did. This place is not even close to Sweet Ginger in Midvale. Edit: Adding food poisoning to the list :/

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BR

Brittany Frampton

I have ordered takeout from here twice, and both times they have messed up the orders. The first time that I ordered from here, they told me to pick it up at 8:15 pm. Upon arrival, they informed me that they actually meant 8:50 pm, so they asked me to come back more than 30 minutes later and didnt even offer to compensate me for the time. The food was good, so I thought I would give them another shot. To my dismay, the second time that I ordered from here, I had ordered about six different dishes and upon time to pick it up, I discovered that they had confused my order with someone elses order, and that they let the other person take my food--even after they had him confirm the phone number on the order. As you can imagine, with six dishes ordered, they asked me to wait another 45 minutes so that they could prepare the food again. Yet again, they offered nothing to compensate me for my time. The owner of this restaurant is rude and obviously doesnt care about anyone elses time frame but her own. I will not be ordering from this restaurant again because they obviously cant get orders right, and I had to fight with them to receive any compensation for their mistakes and lack of attention to detail. The food is good. The service ruined it for me.

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LU

Luke Langford

An okay place. Food hit or miss. Service okay. Went on a Saturday evening post LDS General Conference. Service was slow, as they were a bit overwhelmed. But, to be clear, the place wasnt more than 50% full. They were understaffed. Likely ran the place with 3 people (what looks like a mother/daughter front of house with likely a single person in the back). With 9 tables going at once, they didnt clear anything (when we left after the "rush" every table was left just as it had been by patrons, nothing cleared). Our table received food a couple of plates at a time over ~15 minutes. Cashew and Kung Pao Chicken were good: they have a good brown sauce for those. Orange chicken wasnt good. A bit soggy and the orange sauce was too... gloopy? Hard to explain. But I regretted ordering it and wish that Id stuck to my original order of Kung Pao (was talked out of it by the waitress, who said that their orange chicken was better... it wasnt) I wouldnt fight someone who wanted to go there, but I dont think Id suggest it to others

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NA

Nathan Smith

My wife and I have been in search for a good chinese food place closer to home. Our favorite one is about 30-40 minutes away currently. We decided to give this place a try when we were by Harmons the other day. The food did not disappoint. We tried the ham fried rice, white rice, beef and broccoli, as well as their spicy fragrant ribs. The ribs are definitely something that I am going to crave. I like spicy food though. My wife thought it was too hot for her. That just left more for me though ;). The only thing that makes this not more than 4 stars is because the service was just okay. They were really busy, and it seemed like whenever we needed something we had to flag them down. They did however notice this and apologized. They let us know this is not normal and we both felt that this goes a long way.

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