Teriyaki Madness — Restaurant in Avon

We're new to Avon and TM is less than a mile from our house. We're travel bloggers who review towns, hotels and food services. Our hope was that Teriyaki Madness could become a go-to place for fast, casual take out. Based on our experience tonight we'll become regulars.

First, the staff. The young man at the counter couldn't have been nicer. He's new and obviously has been well trained. He took my order, offered me a "new customer" coupon and told me that my order would take about 10 minutes.

I was curious about the management and asked to speak to the manager. Jeremy came to the counter and introduced himself as the shift manager. He was appropriately very proud of his new restaurant and spent time sharing his vision for how to make the place a success. He was very excited to explain his opinions, which he said centered on having a good, well trained staff. KUDOS!

Now, the food: I had spicy chicken terriyaki with white rice and broccoli. Very fresh, very tasty (in the future I will ask for the teriyaki on the side). My wife had the salmon, brown rice with mixed vegetables and loved it.

We're rooting for this place to be very successful. Based on our experience tonight, we have little doubt it...

I ordered ahead online thinking my food would be ready around the estimated pickup time (+- 5 mins or so) but nope, apparently this place waits until you actually show up before they even start making your food. So what’s the point of ordering ahead?

You can let them know you are on the way, clicked “I’m here” when I arrived, and only then did they start making my order. I ended up waiting 35 minutes for just two bowls. The place wasn’t even busy—maybe 2 or 3 orders ahead of mine. I saw at least four other people come in for online pickups and get told the same thing: “We’re working on it.”

The whole setup is super inefficient and totally goes against the whole “skip the wait” sign they have in the store.

As for the food? Meh. I got the orange chicken bowl. The chicken was cooked fine, but the sauce was nothing special, some of the broccoli was undercooked, and the rice was just okay.

Wouldn’t go out of my way to come back. Honestly, I’d rather just grab an Orange chicken bowl from...

If it were possible to give less than one star this would be it. I walked in with nobody in line (should have been a clue) at 6:00. Ordered a basic steak bowl, nothing custom, nothing unusual. Egg rolls on the side. 45 minutes it took. Steak was not steak but paper thi "steakums" overcooked, hard and dry. Rice was hard clump. Broccoli, what there was was overcooked and mushy. Sauce was boring. The # of people who were waiting as long or longer than myself was crazy. People had ordered ahead online to show up and they hadn't even started the order. Prices are ridiculous, especially for the sub-par quality. Do yourself a favor and go next door to Jersey Mikes and get a bowl. It will be super fresh, better price, much better quality and you'll be out the door in 5 minutes.

This place is gonna fail miserably and they'll blame the economy. They will not cut it unless the make drastic changes to menu, staff training and prices. I just wonder what will be in this space...