Daytona's Restaurant — Restaurant in Thunder Bay

Sucks it has to come to this. There is no fault on the service staff, they do not cook the food nor make the decisions of how to run the business. I love Daytonas. Been a long time fan for breakfast lunch and their dinner plates. But tonight was stupid. Valentine's Day dinner, limited menu, wife and I are excited and the atmosphere is great. We arrive at 6:30pm for our reservation and are seated tucked away in a cozy corner, fine. But unfortunately it took us TWO AND A HALF HOURS to be fed a four course meal of which one of the courses was a salad and soup and the other was luke warm rissoto, the only dish that was hot was the bread. And we didn't even eat dessert! We cut it short! We were tired and had other plans for the night. Honestly I love this place, the food has always been pretty solid, decently priced, and the new renovations? Great. But what the hell. We just dropped $180 on Luke warm soup, duck, and pasta. Literally everything was luke warm at best. There was zero recognition that we were there for 2.5 hours, there was zero question of how the food was, in fact the couple next to us arrived 30 minutes after we did and every single dish they got after the bread came out before us.

I get that they are trying new things and that they want to be higher end but this was not that. The fact that zero appology was made for us having to sit there for 2.5 damn hours is insane. We had four drinks, two each, and they didn't even offer to cover any of them. It was a limited menu, we gave you our food orders at 7pm which was already 30 minutes after we had been there. How was no one in the restaurant asking how long our table had been there for?

Sadly this is the last time we would ever go to something like this from them. We sat there as table after table behind us and throughout the restaurant were leaving and eating their food and we didn't get shit. I'm sorry but we went to the caribou two weeks prior with my wife's family and there was SIX of us. We ordered 3apps, a pizza, everyone got a different main dish, and everyone got a drink and we were there for 1.5hrs... OH and the food was actually Hot....

I have lived in Thunder Bay for more than a year. Coming from the UK I have been really amazed by the quality of restaurants here (especially with service, considerably better than the UK overall). I have loved all the restaurants I have been to (long list) and we go out every week. One of the reasons my family and parents from Toronto come to visit Thunder Bay is for the its fantastic restaurants. Unfortunately this one did not work for us at all. We do not eat bacon or ham which severely restricted our men options (not their fault). The coffee arrived in a dirty cup, there was single-use butter container left inside. It did not look nice at all with butter floating on top. Later I ordered for a steak but it really smelled very bad (probably old piece) and the poached egg was covered with water. The waitress offered to drain the water using napkins but I did not find that option very hygienic, especially with napkins brought in her hands with no gloves. I did not eat my meal (mainly because of the bad smell - really tried I was hungry but couldn't). Service was OK, waitress said she was sorry I didn't like my meal but did not ask what was wrong and how to make it better (she made me feel as if it was all my fault!). The bill arrived and cost was $35.03. I tried to be a bit cheeky and asked if I could pay in cash just $35 cash (did not have 5 cents and did not want to pay any service - I always pay %15 but not this time unfortunately!). Of course, the waitress asked me to pay in full, which is kind of expected and fine with me as my wife had the change. I do not blame her for any of this except for the unwashed coffee cup as she should have checked it first being washed (it must have been used by someone before me). Overall, we were not impressed with our experience and I wished it was better. This is the only restaurant in Thunder Bay I feel I will not go...

I would like to give a BIG THANK YOU

I was at my husbands Christmas party for his work Thursday evening and I was absolutely blown away with Dayton's catering services. They had 4 courses with was appetizers, the main meal, desserts and then pizza at 11 pm. I'm allergic to gluten so I always plan on not eating at events as I don't expect extra treatment but I also ask on the off chance I could, so I went up to the lady that was organizing the food when the appetizer came out and asked if she knew what would/wouldn't have gluten in it, she kindly walked me through and there was nothing 😐 I'm used to this so I wasn't that upset but then I noticed when they were setting up for the main meal it looked like I could have lots of it, so again like I always do I went to ask if she knew and turns out I could have alot, and she had actually called her boss and they went ahead and got me a gluten-free bun, I was flabbergasted they went out of there way to make sure that I didn't get sick and took the extra step and got a bun for me.

This might seem small to some but to the ones who have to worry about what they can and can't eat, this was a BIG deal, like a BIG BIG DEAL 😍

Of course I didn't have dessert or the pizza but the food I did have was amazing.

I'll definitely be thinking of you guys next time for my events and I'll be telling everyone about your awesome service.

Thanks you so very much 💖 Merry Christmas and...