Dao Sushi and Thai — Restaurant in Lyons Township

[Customer Service - Immensely Poor]

Regarding the waitress, her personality was joyfulAnyways, the actions that she did matter more. Here’s a list of what occurred during my time there that caused such a poor grade on customer service:

Water refills within an hour were one. I had to ask the service twice to eventually get my refill (30 minutes into the meal). Unfortunately, I had to share water with a friend of mine since I no longer had any water left in my cup, which puts into perspective the lack of attentiveness the waiter had towards our table. Waiter attentiveness was extremely poor. They preferred to talk with their fellow associates rather than serve us. They looked towards our table while I was raising my hand, approximately two times, they ignored us. I asked the other waiter, same event occurred as I stated above. The tea that was served was given 1 refill. I would understand if it was a one time only drink (pay one, only get one cup), but we weren’t given a teapot despite her refilling it for us. It would’ve been efficient to left the teapot on the table, so we could refill our cups on demand. We had to ask multiple times for tea throughout the meal. I ordered 2 platters of calamari at the same time. One of them did come as an appetizer. However, the secondary platter was the main issue. The kitchen or the waiter didn’t understand that there was a secondary platter. Approximately, 45 minutes later the calamari was served. To put it into perspective, the main course was already served before the second platter arrived. The main course was mostly finished by then.

[Food - Decent]

The food overall was alright, however there were a few bad apples.

Calamari tasted rather bland. It tasted like it wasn’t fully cooked. It was rather cold when it was served. Udon with the chicken was good. It tasted hot and good. I didn’t find any issues with it. Chicken Terriyaki was excellent. The vegetables and the chicken itself were hot and well made. Fish w/ miso sauce (?) tasted terrible. The fish was incredibly soggy and tasted like they just dumped water onto the fish and called it a meal. The sauce wasn’t that great as well, it was immensely bitter. Sushi was alright. It was presented in a well mannered way. It tasted amazing. Regarding the prices, I’d say it’s kind of expensive. Udon was around $26. Calamari was ~$13. 6 pieces of sashimi was approximately $23-$30. It would be better to get a cheaper sashimi elsewhere to be honest.

[Cleanliness - Good]

Overall the establishment looked very nice. Tables and chairs were cleaned when we arrived. Floors were cleaned. The bathroom was somewhat dirty, but that’s alright. Waiters wore an large arrangement of uniforms, some just wearing a t-shirt and jeans. They were well presented regardless.

[Miscellaneous]

I did see other families didn’t really finish their main meals, which could imply that the food wasn’t great or they were already full from their previous appetizers. The mood of the restaurant was good. It wasn’t too loud or quiet. However, one issue I did have while dinning was that the establishment decided to put down the curtains on their windows when the sun was still shining. This made it difficult to read the receipt, which resulted me having to use my phone’s flashlight to see the bill.

Be sure to know that IF YOU ARE A PARTY OF SIX OR MORE, YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY A 18% GRATUITY TIP. Do NOT pay the waitress the tip, since it WILL BE ON the receipt already, you’re just giving the waiter extra on top of the tip. They placed this warning in the very back of the menu and the font was fairly small, not helping since the lighting was as dimmed.

[Overall]

The food is decent and somewhat expensive (most main meals are ~$30 and are fairly small). The cleanliness of the restaurant is good. Customer service is terrible.

I wouldn’t recommend to others if you are highly sensitive to spicy food. I would recommend other Japanese cuisine establishments. Other reviews share if you dig deep share...

From beginning to end the service was bad. I made a reservation for my moms birthday and the person I spoke to on the phone was not even sure we could make a reservation for our time had to check and we had to move up our time, so we did. We had a 7:30 reservation for 10 people and we were sat right away. It didn’t take long for the server to come over and asked to take our order when more than half our table was not ready to order. We made it work and he did not take our drink order. We thought he would come back instead somebody brought us waters to which we asked if we could order drinks he had to get the other guy who took our order originally. Then, we got our drinks. Still no food. We waited for 30-40 minutes to actually get our soup and salad and for the cooking to begin. The presentation was fun. The portion sizes were ridiculous for the price. They forgot to give my sister her rice and brought it when asked. But, getting a refill for the drinks felt impossible. Our server kept disappearing and was pretty much non-existent. Once we were done we sat for another 15 to 20 minutes waiting around and had to ask for the server. He came and brought a birthday dessert which was nice but just tossed it down and walked away. It took him another 15 to 20 minutes to come back then we asked for the check and he brought it. The pricing was so outrageous for what we got the bill was high and not one person at the table was satisfied. I am a person who has been in the service industry and believe in automatic gratuity but in this situation it was as if the server knew he was getting the tip and gave up before he began serving us. We definitely will...

The service was terrible, slow and unprofessional. We ordered 1 order of pad see ew to go and it took an hour and twenty minutes for it to come out. There were only 4 tables in the restaurant that were sat so it wasn’t even busy. The server kept coming to the table to tell us our order would be “out any minute”. After an hour she told us the kitchen lost the ticket and never even started making the dish. I had already closed the check or else I would have canceled the order at this point. After 20 more minutes we finally got our food with no apology but she gave us extra soy sauce packets for the inconvenience. I was in a rush to leave so I decided to call back to ask the manager if there was anything that could be done about this. The host originally told me that they could refund the dish but she needed a manager to do so and there was no manager in so she said she would return my call in 30 minutes. After 2 hours and no call, I called back and the manager was in but decided not to call me back. She was completely unhelpful, extremely rude on the the phone and nothing got resolved. She even lied on the phone saying the restaurant was “busy” as If I wasn’t in the restaurant myself to see there were only 4 tables sat. I’m not sure how they are even able to run a restaurant with a manager that rude. We will not be returning to dao again due to lack of professionalism from management. The food wasn’t that great and the service/ management...