DODs Gourmet Asian — Restaurant in Lavon

They opened this restaurant recently. My wife and I had noticed it when we were stopping by to get pizza next door. If we hadn’t already paid for the pizza, we would have had it then. But we waited a few days and my wife and son and I went for dinner. As we went in we were greeted by the workers. At first just by first glance, it was very similar to the set of a chain Asian restaurant with a certain black and white bear on it. At first there seems to be a little confusion with the worker. You tell them if you want rice or noodles then you go and get your protein at the next section. My wife gets my sons first “He’ll have noodles” then she takes off to the protein. One might think they would get all the people in the parties rice/noodles then go to the protein. When we didn’t move the worker seemed a bit confused. Anyway, once we got passed that it seemed to go smoother. We figure out our protein(s) and head to the checkout. I get the Dods Beef which was quite tasty (But wasn’t as spicy as one would think. Especially since it said it was spicy) and the beef and broccoli ( which tasted almost identical to the chain mentioned above). My wife got hers and my son got a Dods Bowl ( Wish they would have had a kids meal, because that was way too much for my son). My son got the teriyaki chicken (which he loved) and the noodles (Which he didn’t). My wife and I tasted the noodles to see if there was something wrong, and they had absolutely zero flavor at all. As a whole the negatives didn’t deter me from coming back, there was more positives. So we would definitely come back. But that’s just my opinion. Go for a visit and try yourself. Definitely a great change...

I don’t write reviews often, but occasionally when I am wowed, I will go out of my way to provide visibility into the business. This was not the case for this one.

It’s hard to fathom food so bad, so horrible, that I’d go to google and explicitly spend my time writing a negative review. However, I felt I’d be doing my fellow humans a disservice if I didn’t at least provide some detail, so they don’t make the same mistake we did.

My first mistake was ignoring the one star reviews. It really is THAT bad. The food was horrendous, it looked like it had been sitting out for hours. The lo mein noodles were basically mashed potato level mush and had zero flavor whatsoever. They looked legitimately like 3 day old leftovers. The fried rice was clumpy and smelled rancid but attempted to cover up with excessive amounts of fish sauce. The garlic chicken was sweet and bland, the only thing that didn’t look old perhaps, but tasted like candy coated bland chicken. The crab rangoons were stale and hard. Last was the potstickers, while they at least didn’t smell rancid, honestly after the rest of the mess we were too worried to actually try them. We literally through it into the trash after spending over $60 on this, but thankfully door dash refunded the order.

Don’t. Just Don’t. Never again. Trust the one star reviews and ignore any others, because they’ve got to be fake.

For the business owner: figure out what’s wrong here and please find a chef with some pride in their craft. I personally would be ashamed if I produced...

We finally ordered from here and we tend to agree with some of the common thoughts we saw in other reviews.

Portion size - good Price - good

Taste - Beef and broccoli: bland but okay Dods beef: actually quite good, but a little too spicy for me Egg drop soup: good Crab rangoons: good Teriyaki chicken: probably the worst thing we had. It was the same color as the fried rice. There's nothing caramelized and it's very bland. Its not like any teriyaki I've ever had. Its basically just tasted like boiled chicken. Fried rice: it's not fried. And it doesn't include anything other than rice - no eggs, no veggies, and no seasoning. It looks like they just tossed steamed white rice in a small amount of soy sauce. *Sidenote: We couldn't figure out why, but it smelled and tasted like Indian curry. There were definitely curry spices in the rice and chicken.

Overall, it was okay. Nothing was off putting and it seemed clean inside. But it also seemed very bland. I really want to support the business and the price is good, but its not something I would order again.

Maybe it's the business model. It looks like it's a large batch pre-prepared buffet style kitchen behind the counter. Once you see that, it somewhat explains why the entrees are relatively bland and dont have any "pan flavor" you'd get from things being cooked to order. Instead, it just tastes like it's heated like a cafeteria tray.

All criticism is meant to be constructive. Not trying to hurt anyone's feelings but none of us were...