Dalaya — Restaurant in Sylva

I came here for my 40th birthday. And if I gave them any credit, they would have ruined it. We showed up 15 minutes after opening hours and were told we needed to wait, standing inside the door, because the one server was too stressed to seat us even though there were 2 to 3 open tables in the restaurant. The restaurant only holds about twelve tables, which, in my past dining experience, is about how many tables a server has in their section per night anyway. After about 20 minutes of standing in the doorway while the server rushed around, we asked if we could just sit down at one of the tables instead of standing there awkwardly (it's a really small space). The server proceeded to say that they don't trust their chairs and tables to stay together, so he needed to move them and pull them out for us. This rule, however, seemed to change as soon as other people came in, and they were allowed to seat themselves immediately. Every single time the server would come to the table, he'd give an overly loud and overly apologetic, passive Aggressive speech about how busy they were And how if we could just be patient when we were being very patient. We were literally just waiting to put our food order in when he was ready. As I said, it was my birthday, we were not trying to make a scene nor did we say anything to him about hurrying up. We were chill, having a quiet, romantic time holding hands and waiting for him to take our order. But he kept giving excuses and making apologies, running his hands through his beard over and over, and trying to explain how busy he was and how he didn't have any help. He kept loudly saying Apologies and excuses to our table as if we were creating a problem just by choosing their dinner establishment for dinner. He was honestly embarrassing us when we weren't doing anything and we were being very polite. His overly loud over-Explanations of everything made everyone look at the table he was talking to and again, it was just embarrassing. He spent so much time making excuses for why he was so frazzled instead of just doing his job. He Drew such attention to himself and the situation And spent so much time complaining about being overworked that he could have just taken our order and served us. We waited two hours for our food. But the people that were seated after us received their food immediately after we did. There were at least three people in the kitchen cooking, so I'm not sure what the problem was getting the food out. We heard this was a James Beard award winning place with a famous chef and thankfully, the food was good, but this server just ruined everything. Top that off with him coming out of the bathroom, caressing his beard over and over and over again, and then touching all of our stuff with his beard hands. I have never had a server make me so uncomfortable before or seen a server not be able to handle only 7 tables with two people each. It was sad And the server's behavior felt like borderline harassment. I will never put myself through that again. It was excruciating to beg him to take our order instead of talking and talking talking about how over worked he was. Keep it together, mate. Every restaurant has hours of operation, and most of those restaurants are ready to go and staffed when those hours come about. It's pretty ridiculous to have a restaurant that can't operate in the first two hours of their opening, with a server who guilt trips you for coming to...

Ok where do I start????we drove an hour to this place ! The staff very nice and it ends there!!!!! I do not understand how this place could have the reviews and it has the food is so hopelessly average I really can't even remember what I just ordered not to mention their website doesn't mention that this is basically a dine out facility. Not only is it like picnic but there's not even a plastic plate to eat your food and we asked for a plastic plate and we were given a box no knives no ice water nothing waited about 20 minutes for the food to come out ...again nothing memorable wings that tasted like any other place you would get wings the dumplings which were ice cold !we ordered a pork dish that was just tough grilled pork with less than a half an ounce of sauce to spare to dip it in no sticky rice we ordered spring rolls which we never received we were charged for them which OK we were just happy to get out! as we sat outside adjacent to this dilapidated building that had chairs for inside eating as they were all upside down on the tables ...apparently they weren't serving inside we had little appetizers not big portions one beer two wines and it was over $100 ice cold food no flavor no utensils ,no plates ,knifes and we had the company of flies all over us as we were eating it was definitely one of the most unpleasant lunch experiences I've ever had so disappointing to think we spent an hour out of Asheville with fantastic dining venues everywhere to choose this!....these had to be paid reviews !!! No way are they legit! The pictures of food on line displayed were not offered at our visit !!! We were so sticky and felt nasty dirty after eating ...I would have enjoyed eating McDonald's in my car at least I would have been able to eat out of plastic wrap verses a cardboard box !!! It was a joke !!! The best part was we had a good laugh on the way home !!! My fault I...

I dined solo once last summer and raved about it after. Finally brought some friends recently for my birthday. Everyone was pretty impressed. Dalaya has it all: complex flavors, a variety of dishes, with comforting favorites and adventurous specials. Utterly serene, cozy space. Water gently bubbling by. Laid-back, thorough service.

I cautioned my friends that we might have to wait for our food, but everything took a very reasonable amount of time.

We started with the Famous Fish Sauce Wings, and the Spring Roll Special. The wings are fiery and so flavorful. Layers of umami. The rolls were even better! I believe it was a ground pork and shrimp filling and it was divine. Perfect texture inside and out. I think these rolls are similar to the Kiao Khoong Todd listed on their website but maybe a different wrapper.

Our entrees included the Blood Orange Branzino Special (9/10), the Red Curry with Duck Special (8/10), Plaa Todd (Catfish Curry - 10/10!!), Khao Soi (8/10), and a fifth dish I didn’t try or catch the name of.

I had the branzino and loved the inventiveness. The blood orange sauce was nicely sweet and sour. The red curry and duck were very tasty, but the plaa todd, catfish curry, was the clear winner. This curry had so much depth. One of our party got an order of it to-go.

Dalaya offers a good selection of beer, wine, and other beverages, but no cocktails. The ginger lemongrass iced tea was a favorite in our group.

We finished with sweet corn ice cream! Reminded me of the queso ice cream at Neng Jr’s in Asheville. Not quite as good as that, but interesting. I liked it, some didn’t care for it.

I will be back to try lunch very soon! Thank you for a...