East by Southwest — Restaurant in Durango

I waited about 2 weeks to write this review. I wanted to see if the owners would contact me on their own accord, considering that I made some complaints the night I was there. If I were the owner, I definitely would have followed up with a customer that head such a bad experience at my restaurant. Clearly, the owner of East by Southwest doesn't care.

I also wanted to wait to see if if my opinion of the evening would change over time. Sometimes it does. Sometimes I have a bad experience and then I think about it later and I am less upset about it. But, that did not happen here. In fact, the more I thought about it, and the longer I waited, The Worst it got.

I think of myself as a pretty fair but mostly easy reviewer. You see, I enjoy just about everything that I try and every place that I go. You really have to do something pretty seriously wrong to get a bad review from me. This restaurant gets a bad review.

First let me set some background. I came with my family. We were coming to ride The Polar Express, the train that the Durango Silverton train runs in the winter to give families The Polar Express experience. We wanted to have a special night out. And we really thought that picking East by Southwest would be a slam dunk. I mean how could we go wrong, really, based on everything we heard. But the truth is they just didn't care whether we had a good time or not.

So let me give you the bottom line up front. (BLUF). From the get-go, our waitress did not listen to us, and the result was bad service. The food tasted bad. The food did not come out all at once. In fact, one meal came out 45 minutes after all of the other meals. It only came out at all because we brought it to their attention. They had completely forgotten to feed one of their guests. The food was enormously overpriced. The quality of the food was low. In one case, the sushi tasted extremely fishy like it had been sitting around too long. And at the end of the meal, we discovered that the owners charge a surcharge it is not listed in the prices, does not go to the staff, and isn't apparently attached to any particular service or food quality. In short, the owner decided to keep prices low by adding a surprise surcharge to the meal.

Now some details. Our server wasn't very attentive. She couldn't remember what we ordered. She couldn't get our meals out on time. She forgot one of our meals all together. And then she left before we were done eating. Someone else had to come and take over her station.

The food was pretty poor quality. Frankly, we didn't enjoy it. The worst of it was a spider roll with fish that tasted so bad we didn't finish it. The other pieces of sushi were edible, but nothing special. The teriyaki chicken was pretty good, but everything that they put on the plate with the teriyaki chicken was pretty bad. I can only even know if I could identify what some of the things were. It was some kind of Southwest Asian egg roll thing that didn't taste like integral, and didn't taste like southwestern food. It just tasted blah. Even the fried rice we ordered came out Bland and flavorless. I would say it had no texture, but the truth is it had a mono texture to it - mush. That's not really what you want in fried rice. And I would have thought that a restaurant with as much hype as this one could get something simple like fried rice correct. Then additionally, they forgot one of our party's meals. It was another 45 minutes or possibly an hour before my son-in-law was able to eat his dinner. So, the food was bad, the food didn't come out, the staff really didn't care, and all in all it was a terrible experience.

Then, they tacked on a surcharge just to put an exclamation point on the end of a bad experience.

Bottom line, just don't go here. You will be...

I came here tonight because my girlfriend wanted to take me out for my birthday. We usually go to pop sushi but wanted to mix it up. The service was awkward. The manager poured my draft IPA which foamed over the glass by about two inches when it was dropped off at my table. After making a sticky mess the server used a napkin in attempt to clean the glass and table. After an awkward fail, i used a chopstick to scrape the foam into the soy dish. The server left the dish on my table all night until I moved it to an adjacent table. We order two special rolls and some sashimi. The special rolls are both bland. One is dry (hamachi something with avocado) they upcharge 1 dollar for ponzu but dont tell you at any point. The spider roll is bland and has sprouts in it???? The sashimi comes out with a fishy smell and taste. The portions are small and sliced in different sizes with slices down the center for some reason. I send the sashimi back and they dont try to bring a menu or put any other food in or anything at all. Zero resolution. I had a beer and no food but my girl ate at least and the bill was fifty bucks! We exit the restaurant and actually pas the manager who simply says have a good night... I will not return here... And my family has had dinners here for several years on many occassions. It has never been great and tonight was offensive. By the way i am at the other restaurant previously mentioned right now as I was still hungry.. Their hamachi is delicious and comes with ponzu at no...

We had heard OK things about this place. We wanted a nice dinner out for our family of 5, 3 older teenage boys. We beat the rush and ordered right away. Place was full within 5 minutes. We ordered sushi & hot food. Our waitress mentioned food would come out at different times. We knew that as this was not our first time at a place like this. Over the course of the next 30 minutes, most of our food came out, except 2 sushi rolls that were the meal for 1 of the boys. Our son kept an eye on our waitress, LeAnne, from across the room. She saw he did not have his food and did nothing but keep talking to another server. Knowing sushi, we saw both rolls he ordered go to a table across the room that ordered 15 minutes after us. When our waitress can to "check on us" she still seemed clueless and/or didn't care that not all the food came out. She quickly blamed it on being busy. No apology just diversion. When she finally brought the food, same thing, no apology.

That was just the service. The food, especially the hot food, totally lacked any flavor. The "spicy" did not even have the spice heat of regular pepper.

Like others we spoke with a "manager" that like the others, he didn't care. We left a better than appropriate tip for the crummy service.

All I know is that it is not a place we will recommend nor...