The Dalton Royal — Restaurant in Meridian

Manager/owner please listen. This establishment has great potential to be successful but the path you are taking is off and it shows.

First of all, walking into the restaurant, the atmosphere is depressing. You have a STAGE and the background music is quieter than a coffee shop if there was any music. The layout of the restaurant also gives echos all together, it feels like I’m dining in a large warehouse or garage.

Next, the restaurant design is lackluster. I don’t mean to hate on the designer but nearly all aspects of the establishment is not aligning. First of all the walls are plain and lack decorations. The bar is also very basic. You are competing with many other great establishments in the area with each one having their own twist and character. The bar here is the definition of copy and paste from google, simple and plain. The open kitchen also looks depressing with just a cutout in the wall. It seems like no thought was given to the design and layout. Open kitchens in restaurants add to the experience for the guests. This is not the case for this establishment. The ceilings look super industrial and lighting doesn’t fit.

Now lets talk about the bathroom situation. You have a LARGE restaurant with tables spread apart and you have ONE restroom??????? Who thought this was a good idea, I want to know. Restaurant is not just about capacity of guest but what is more important is guest experience. One restroom in this large of a space just leaves guest with a bad impression. Be careful of your priorities. Designing a bigger restroom while cutting into the other spaces removing a couple of tables or pool table is undoubtably the better choice.

Now the food. Food is decent but needs a lot more work in creating unique dishes that taste better. And the price has to also change. Again you are competing with many other great options in the area. Having a 10 dollar salad with almost nothing but lettuce is just respectfully stupid. With places like Texas Roadhouse offering 4 dollar salads that have much more ingredients. The flat iron steak was not good with too much charr. The overall take away for food is that prices are not reasonable and the food items are always better somewhere else. If you want a better burger- Red Robin’s, better steak- Texas road house- better pasta- olive garden. There is just nothing unique about the menu and the taste is just decent. In another word the dish and presentation doesn’t reflect the higher end cost. This would not be that big of an issue if the atmosphere and the culture at this establishment was great and something that others can’t compete with but as I have said before. This is not the case.

Now the most important issue, the vision. I don’t know what the owner of this establishment wants this place to become but right now nothing is aligning. My personal vision for this restaurant is a fun night clubish style restaurant where people don’t just come here for the food but to have a good time with their friends. Walking in, the lighting is dimmer, louder music surrounds the guest filling in the empty spaces. People talk to each other and playing pool or at the arcades while waiting for their food/ having a glass from the bar etc. Occasionally live music is playing that adds human element and emotion. I would love a place like this. The reason why I would like a place like this? Because it is unique. If this is the vision of the restaurant then you are on the wrong path.

But for now concrete steps need to be taken in order for this place to be successful or even survive. This place is in a good location but also has a disadvantage with the traffic entrances. Again you are competing with a lot of good choices in the area that offer good atmosphere and good food at prices that fits the location. you need your own unique twist( which you do) but is not done well. All the pieces of the puzzle don’t align.

I hope someone is able to see this and deeply consider changes. I hope one day I can come back and have a...

We visited day 3 of opening and were excited after all the hype. We made a reservation online, thinking this would avoid delays and we held off on eating all afternoon for our 8pm reservation. We arrived to a half full room of tables and a singer saying goodbye for the evening which was disappointing given it was a Saturday night. We were quickly seated, and looked around to take in the atmosphere. It was disappointing. Everything looked half done, and didn't make sense. Because live music was over, all we could here was echoing of others in the large room w/no music playing in the background. Our waitress was nice, but seemed frazzled. I ordered a 44 N w/Soda & splash of sprite and my husband a beer. About 15 mins later she arrived with a small glass of 44 (2 shots) and a splash of sprite. Not sure why they couldn't get this drink right but I kept it because by this time I was just happy to have a drink.

We placed our order and noticed no one around us had food. We were a little worried but knew it was opening day so we would be patient. after 45 mins of waiting the waitress came out to tell us that they were out of salmon so my friend would need to choose something else, but it would be free. She changed her order to the steak, instead. She assured us our food would be out soon and offered us free drinks due to the long wait. We agreed, and I said please bring me and my friend the same thing I already ordered, 44 N Soda, & a splash of sprite. She said no problem. A few mins later, two bartenders bring 2 shots of Vodka, and 2 small "backs" of sprite, no ice to the table. We were surprised and thought- did we order a deconstructed drink? It was comical at this point so we said- can we get some ice with this? They said oh sorry we thought this was what you wanted and took back the drinks returning with the small drinks similar to what I got first time. Another 20 mins pass and we are starting to get hangry and most people were still waiting or left already.

Our food arrives after 110 mins of waiting, no music, barely any drinks. She drops our 3 plates and runs before we can even look down-Oh no- no silverware. we finally have food, but no way to even take a bite. We try and try to get someone to hear us in the rumble of people talking about their dissatisfaction. finally- after 10 mins we have a fork and napkin! Needless to say- we were picking at the food right away as we were starving. Here's our assessment. I got the Chicken Scallopini- I got burnt, cold, overcooked chicken, with no sauce, covered in cold mushrooms, and an ice cream scoop of mashed potatoes that tasted like cement. My husband got the Shrimp scampi- note they came out an hr earlier and said they were out of the noodles and it would be cavatappi instead, in an almost kid size bowl, dry as could be and zero flavor. My friend, who got comped steak, said half of the steak was medium well and the other half was rare w/no season or flavored.

I told the waitress my food was cold, and she offered to take it back- to which I said no thank you, I don’t have that time in my life. I tried one bite of each item and decided it was safer to skip dinner tonight. My husband choked down a few bites of noodles and gave up. My friend tried to eat a few bites of her steak and got so grossed out for a rubber bite followed by a bloody bite that she almost got sick. We told the waitress that we were done and just wanted to get the hell out of here. She said she understood and said let me get your check. Too which we all thought-for what? Maybe my husband’s 2 beers? She returned with a bill of $42 vs $135, w/comp for food. The bill was 2 beers, & 3 botched drinks we had while waiting 2 hrs. we were surprised but we threw cash on the table and ran out the door.

This place is a disaster & even if I tell myself this was because it was day 3, I cannot fathom ever walking it to this Class F establishment again. Hopefully my review can convince everyone to save themselves the pain...

**UPDATE: in response to the owner. I don’t appreciate the outright lies around the situation. So I want to clarify a few things because my original review was too nice:

In the afternoon we met with the cooks and they asked “how many people? 75?” And to that I responded “it might be closer to 60” and we ended up having about 50 there. At no point did we say the words “25 people” Our guests were not taking extremely large portions of food. The number of coconut shrimp that was there was probably enough for 25 people. We however ordered 14 orders of them and were told each order was 6 pieces. 90 pcs were not brought out. When we asked about this, we were then told it is done by weight, not pieces. When we met with your cooks, they were extremely frustrated with you because you had not updated our order from when we talked to you a week prior, and they said “he does this all the time.” They had to go out to the store to get more stuff! The order they had for us was not the correct order so thank goodness we got there early. You did not update our order after we called 1 week prior with your staff. When asked if we wanted more food brought out, it was going to be at more of a cost. It was not offered to rectify the situation. You were going to charge us more. That’s why we declined. Had you offered to bring more out at no cost then this would not be an issue.

I absolutely do not recommend going here for any reason now, based on the owners response to me.

Original review We reserved the event space for a large party with family and friends a few months before. We set up menu items ahead of time as asked, and communicated with the owner about how many people we would have. We were excited for our event to be here.

First, I’ll start with the positives: Great atmosphere. Pool, arcade games, full bar, and the karaoke at the end of the night was fun. They do have really great food there too so if you’re going to get dinner, it’s good!

However, we are really disappointed in how our event was “catered.” We were told that if we got $500 of food, then we could have the event space for the night. We ended up adding on some items as well, making it over $800. Originally we said we would have about 75 people, but that number ended up being about 50 instead. Within minutes all the food was gone, and only half of our guests had gotten their plates. We asked if they were bringing more out, and they said they “measure servings by weight” but that was never communicated, and the expectation had been set as per person for servings. They weren’t willing to make it right or do anything about it. We brought a lot of money in last night as well with all of our group ordering drinks.

Unfortunately I wouldn’t recommend doing an event here, it really just wasn’t worth it at all and we did not get what we paid for. $830 to have each guest have some spinach dip and bread, and only half to get coconut shrimp was a pretty bad deal. For them not to make it right or try to fix it, especially when we are spending that much money, is pretty terrible. So we...