DanDan — Restaurant in Milwaukee

We had read about this restaurant and had been very excited to try it for a couple months. In fact, we were all excited to visit the restaurant on Mother’s Day to celebrate our mother’s special day. We made the reservation two weeks ahead of time and we’re planning on ordering their house specialty, the Peking duck. They notified us after we were seated that this is only available upon request and that there would not be any way for us to get it for our mother. We reviewed the online menu and did not find this stated anywhere, so be aware that this is not a restaurant you can just show up an order the house special, you need to let them know apparently some time before the reservation. Still, that seems like potentially it could’ve been our error. So we decided to try to make the best of the night. The waitress had shaken her head at us and walked away after we mentioned not seeing the rules on the duck on the menu. She told us it was a long day and insinuated she was just waiting to get off. We asked about other items we could order and she told us that most of the items were somewhat the same and just substituted beef or chicken, nothing according to her was really a stand out. We ordered drinks and finished our first round, she didn’t get us a second round of drinks and instead just collected our glasses. Keeping in mind we are coming in at 7 PM to celebrate and the restaurant wasn’t near closing. I looked around, other servers did seem to be pleasant and smiling.

We didn’t really know what to order, the waitress wasn’t helpful as mentioned. The food we ended up getting was OK. Initially I was excited about their gratuity policy as they have 20 % added to each check automatically. I waited tables for six years myself and have respect for a restaurant that treats their servers like this, but after the experience above, it felt more like a penalty.

I felt really sad for our mother as this was something she was looking forward to for two weeks and although possibly not knowing about the Peking duck and reserving it could’ve been blamed on us (even though it didn’t state that it needs to be reserved online), the waitress and the way we were treated was so negative we really had to find another activity after dinner just to change the negative vibe for Mother’s Day. It was our first visit but will consider this going forward on...

This has got to be the the strangest review I have ever written but here we go… This review is based upon our first dining experience last night at Dan Dan, prior to a concert the 6 of us ladies were in route to attending. I want to preface by saying my family owns a well known catering company and we are stereotypical food and service snobs. We couldn’t wait to be dined on as it rarely happens for our family. We were greeted with wonderful smells and total kindness from both the host and the bartender as we waited on our table. A great first impression. Drinks were fabulous and so were our appetizers…I mean, absolutely fabulous. Dinner the exactly the same. I have never had a better meal in all my life. That is, when we actually ended up getting our meals. Half of our table got their food pretty quickly and the other half, me included, were still waiting for our entrees for over 30 minutes AFTER the others had finished their dinners. It was bizarre. We just sat there watching half our table eat. Be it the restaurant was busy but there was absolutely no apology for it. Additionally, our waters were empty all of dinner and our waitress never refilled them for us. Salty food sis, come on now. Not once did oir waitress check in on our table or ask how dinner was. Lastly, we were told after bills had been placed on our table that DanDan is a fair wage place of employment and a 20% service fee was automatically added to the bill. I presumed that meant our gratuity was added to the bill…we did have 6 people around our table after all and that made total sense to all of us. Standard procedure. We only ever tip 20% or more as a food industry family ourselves. No, actually…they wanted additional gratuity on top of that 20%. Bad business model. Tell your clientele this right upfront…not AFTER a bill has been placed on the table. The strange part of my review is that even though our overall experience wasn't good and we ended up an hour late for our concert…the food was so good that we actually all said we’d come back. We just hope we aren’t seated with the same waitress again. Customer service is so important these days and I wouldn’t had considered her for employment if she applied with us. Please teach your staff members that kindness...

My friend and I came here tonight to celebrate her belated birthday. We both have never been here before and she wanted to check it out. For appetizers we ordered the mung bean and scallion pancakes and the crab rangoon. While the appetizers were decent, the crab rangoons were incredibly greasy. For entrees we ordered the honey walnut shrimp and singapore noodles. The honey walnut shrimp was not as good as we had hoped. While it was fried perfectly, the sweet sauce was boring and barely had any walnuts on top. Also, for the plates to be "family style serving sizes", there were about 7-8 shrimps and came with the tiniest side of white rice (barely enough for one person). The 'singapore noodles' weren't singapore noodles. The noodles were undercooked and thick in width, similar to lomein noodles. The sauce tasted like there was Chinese five spice in it - which wasn't bad tasting but NOT what you'd find in any singapore noodle recipe. The char siu (which is Chinese bbq pork with a pink hue to it) in the dish resembled dry, overcooked pork belly and definitely did not have that distinct Char siu flavor nor color. I had my reservations about this place. Chinese fusion restaurants in Milwaukee have typically let me down as no one seems to know how to execute Chinese flavors well. If it was not for my friend's birthday dinner choice, I would have probably never given this place a chance. If you're going to charge an arm and a leg for mediocrity and on top of that, tack on a service fee to every diners' bills (for absurd reasons that actually should be provided for the staff by the employer), at least have the decency to blow them away with flavor and well executed food to make them WANT to come back. Two stars for the service that we received from our sweet and personable server, whom I hope actually sees some of that...