Davanti Enoteca — Restaurant in Lyons Township

Huge let down. Will NEVER return! Been coming to this place for the past 3 years. It started off as a great spot, and we slowly introduced our friends and family here. But starting about a year ago, we started observing a decline in consistency. And last night, we gave it one more shot and went away with one of the worst dining experiences we’ve had to endure.

We started to pick up weird cues from our waiter as soon as we started. We didn’t feel like drinking, so said water was fine. Immediate attitude. He came back 5 minutes later It was 5:35, so we asked for happy hour menu, another weird response where he said “oh” and walked two steps away and came back saying “forget it, I’ll just tell you. It’s the focaccia, basically our signature appetizer.” … ok no sweat, dude’s having bad day. Fine. We’ll have that plus the polenta with ragu, what we always get when we go there, cool, let’s get the night going. He asked if we wanted anything else, we said we’ll start with these for now and wait a bit more to order later. To which he promptly snatched our menus off the table… ok, I guess we’re done.

Food was served quickly (not by the same waiter, might I add, everyone else we interacted were great), unfortunately, the ragu was full of jerky, teeth breaking jerky. Now… Asian cultures generally like to avoid conflicts. So we found ourselves trying to “endure” the plate, but at a certain point, too much was too much. We looked for our waiter, nowhere to be found. When within eyeshot, we felt like he actively avoided us. It’s not a large dining room, maybe 8 tables he was waiting on MAX! We were left alone for about 25 minutes to chew on our chew toys that tasted more and more like I’m on a hidden camera TV show.

Finally, after 30 mins, he appeared coldly to our table side. I asked for the bill. We also very nicely told him, “hey just so you can let the kitchen know, the ragu was not ok, the texture of the meat was like jerky, we woulda told you this sooner but you weren’t around.” To which he responded “sounds good” and walked off.

This was when the night took its final turn. My girl was so upset that she went to ask for the manager (she had to go to the hostess, because of course, dude walked off and didn’t return for a hot minute). Our waiter returned with our bill, which was wrong! And I had to let him know our night was ruined, to which he said nothing. Manager soon followed. Which then kicked off even more back and forth that was just too late and honestly made us stay even longer in a situation we desperately wanted to get out of.

In the end, we had to forcefully ask to be let out of the situation, we paid way more than we owed, left our gift card that could have paid for the meal two times over, because we want to make sure we owe them nothing. All we wanted was to salvage whatever is left of our night.

It’s been a full day now, we’ve been able to process more what had happened. And we want to believe none of the treatment we received was born out of discrimination. But hey, we’re just glad that it’s over, and we’ll never have to return again.

We would like to caution anyone to avoid this place, so you don’t get caught in the crosshairs of I don’t even know what the heck it was… I just know, you don’t want to...

We did not enjoy our Mother's Day dinner at the new Naperville location.

Upon arrival, we were seated at a high top under poor lighting that was right next to the kitchen entrance and a stand where servers congregate to print bills and grab new sharing plates and silverware. It felt very claustrophobic, and I appreciated that they moved us to a booth when one opened up nearby where it was less crowded and had better lighting.

We ordered wine and a salad to start, but our actual dinner orders were not taken until about 7:30 (one hour after our reservation time), and then food was brought out another 30 minutes later, so about 1.5 hours after we arrived. We had hoped to order the gnocchi or raviolo but they had run out of those and other items. My family of 4 shared the Italian Chopped Salad (which was okay, but the marinated artichokes were quite spicy), Rigatoni Vodka (which was small and bland, and they substituted the noodle type without asking or letting us know), Focaccia di Recco (which was undercooked and doughy), and the Davanti Burger (which was overcooked). More than once someone from the kitchen almost delivered another party's food to our table. We told them each time we didn't order it as they were about to place it on our table and then watched them take it to the table next to ours. When the bill was brought, we noticed the wine we ordered was $20 more than it was listed on the menu that we pointed to when we placed the order-- apparently, the server accidentally brought us the wrong wine (of the same name) and the manager then acted like he was doing us a favor by discounting $20.

Our server seemed like she was trying her best, though it was clear all the servers were very frustrated with the kitchen and management. After over 2 hours, we left frustrated (and...

My family of our had dinner here last night after the Illumination show at Morton Arboretum and everything was off from the moment we walked through the door. No warm greeting, no smile, they (the hostess and the manager) only wanted to look at my phone to verify our reservation (the restaurant was empty). We were seated by the hostess who dropped our menus without a smile, no "enjoy your dinner", etc. When it was time to order, the waitress informed us they were all out of our top THREE choices. Why wouldn't you inform us of that from the beginning? When I kindly mentioned that we were disappointed about the unavailable menu items to the manager, who was pouring our wine, he told us "well you can come back tomorrow". Hmmmm thanks. The first dish that arrived was the wrong pasta dish (giant rigatonti vs the giant raviolo that we've had at the DE on Taylor downtown-delicious). We sent back the rigatoni and when she brought the raviolo, it had about 1 cup of oil poured on it and the pasta was white and chalky- clearly not cooked correctly. Not even close to aldente, it was raw. I pointed it out to our waitress and requested it be taken off our bill-which it never was. We were really not trying to be difficult and having been in the service industry in the past I was appalled how badly they were fumbling, being one of the only tables occupied. If you want to try Davanti Enoteca, go to the one on Taylor street downtown as unfortunately this one offers really terrible customer service and awful food. We won't...