Zen has all of the necessary ingredients and potential but needs refinement to survive. The building is top notch but the ambience is killed by the office lights emanating from the glass wall from the kitchen. You can't really see the kitchen due to the etching so I'm not sure why the window is open in the first place. Beyond the mood killing florescents, it gives you a nice view of the "what to do when choking poster" stainless steel hoods and trash bags. It looks like they might have live music at times but I was surprised to not have some music swanky fusion music playing in the background
Our seating was delayed for just a moment as we were told the kitchen was running behind. The staff were very nice and ultimately we were served by the bartender. We had the crispy shumai, papaya salad, mango sushi, and green curry. The shu mai were presented nicely but didn't have much flavor and the accompanying soy didn't add much. The papaya salad was a highlight although we needed to request additional spice to give it a kick. The mango sushi was presented beautifully and tasted great. The chef clearly composed the plate with attention to detail.
Despite the strong recommendation from our server, the green curry was uninspiring. An enormous plate with an overturned bowl of plain rice was all that accompanied the bowl of coconut green curry. The curry itself was very tame and sparsely mixed with three small pieces of eggplant, a few ounces of pork and maybe some bamboo shoots? It was mostly a bowl of coconut curry milk and was way closer to a soup than it should be. For $18 I would've expected some thought towards presentation and plenty of veggies to make it worthwhile. Put another way, it didn't surpass an $8 dollar curry at most stripmall Thai restaurants.
I'm pulling for Zen and hope they put the pieces together.