D'juan's Bistro — Restaurant in Vinings

I've been here 4x and I'm a huge fan of the oysters. I do have some critiques about my experience thus far. My first time was amazing and I decided to get in on the $1.75 oyster every Wednesday deal recently. Definitely make a reservation because space is limited and restaurant is extremely popular. The earlier the better because today it took over 30 minutes to be seated with a reservation. I got the same waitress I had last week and she is an older woman with beautiful locs. During this visit I noticed some things that can be adjusted or at least taken note of to make some improvements. My oysters were brought to me lukewarm verses piping hot like it usually is. They had to be sitting there for a significant amount of time because they usually hold heat for a while. The only thing that I can think of is this sever is overwhelmed with the amount of tables she has to serve and cannot keep up with the traffic. It took her over 20 minutes to come and swipe my card so I could leave the establishment and that is quite annoying. The easiest most quickest part of dining in should be paying the bill but not with her. She handed me my receipt and kept walking around talking to people having a good ol time verses grabbing my debit card that was already in my hand and simply swiping it through the machine. She’ll set things on the table instead of handing it to the patron and I find it to be rude to be honest. I’ll request to not have her next time. There is a young man that was on point one time and had a great attitude the entire time. Now on to the food. Oysters is always a winner especially because of the sauce but has to be served hot. I would have asked the server for fresh ones but asking for things is like pulling teeth when she barely sticks around to see if anyone needs anything. She’ll ask “are yall ok” out of routine but not actually take the time to receive an answer. I opted to take it home and warm it in my oven myself. I've also had the stuffed crab cake egg rolls, crawfish Mac and cheese, beignets, wings, and lobster poboy. The crawfish mac & cheese got sent back. It needs some work. Cheese sauce was runny and it didn't have much flavor(boil the elbow noodles in chicken broth) or much crawfish meat. I was dissatisfied with the preparations and the ingredients that were used. I feel as though they could use a better variety of cheeses, seasonings and just a overall better recipe for the mac & cheese, as well as adding more crawfish meat to make it worthwhile or else get rid of it. The beignets are absolutely delicious. No complaints. The wings are delicious. I enjoyed the sauce flavor a lot. Now the lobster Poboy needs work as well as far as it needs to be a cajun sauce of some sort because mayonnaise and ketchup is quite offensive and it downgrades the taste of the lobster. I feel as though some type of a creamy Cajun or even a remoulade sauce would suffice, but everything else about that sandwich is perfect, minus the condiments. The crab meat eggrolls are absolutely delicious, but the size is disappointing for the price. I feel as though you all could do better but taste...

Let me start by saying the owner came and introduced himself. He was very pleasant. However let's get into the service of our server. My husband ordered a double Crown neat the server brought it to him in two shot glasses (SMH). All of our food came out separately and sporadically. My son ordered macNcheese and the crab cake. He was able to eat almost all of his macNcheese and his crab cake still had not come out because the server forgot to put it in. When I called the owner over and told him about this he went to the kitchen. He came back and told us they had to make another batch of crab cakes mixture but it will be out in 3 minutes. Which we should have been told about that because we could have canceled and it should have been taken off of our check. By the time the cake cake came out my son had 2 more bites of mac n cheese left bc it had been 20 minutes since mac n cheese came out. Next when my husband's catfish and shrimp platter came out the server never brought ketchup, cocktail sauce or tartar sauce. It was brought out in a bowl and not on a plate. He ordered collar greens with his meal they literally came out 30 minutes later. The server came to the table and said, you ordered greens to right. This was after we told him we never received our son's crab cake. The collared greens tasted like turnips, so we asked the owner to come over. He assured us they were collard greens, they didn't even look like collards. So we were asked did we want something else. We said no but they kept saying oh no let's just get you something else, the dirty rice is good. That should have been free for time we have been waiting and everything coming out separate but it wasn't. They charged for the dirty rice. Which was left on the table. They charged us for that as well. I ordered egg rolls and yams. I was told after my crab cake egg rolls came out 15 minutes later that they were out of yams. I would think they would have known that when they took my order. I took a bite of the crab cake egg roll and to me it was nasty I didn't finish my egg rolls. I didn't taste like a crab cake egg roll and they were very dry, I needed a big drink of water with just a bite. The gut punch of all of this is they have the nerve to charge a 20% gratuity for service on service you do not get. Each item on the receipt came out separate and some of the stuff didn't even come out. We were told at the last minute that it wasn't available. We truly thank God that we were able to eat out and afford it, but it was not worth the money we paid. The only thing that we can say was decent about this outing was the char-grilled oyster trio. Sometimes the best thing you can do is just not go back and spread the word because it wasn't even worth arguing about the gratuity charge for the service we did not get and the food that was not good. I couldn't recommend this place in good conscience.

The space was too small for the amount of people that were in there. You're pretty much on top...

Sunday afternoon- we came hungry and kinda dusty after our morning hike- but the vibe was casual and the friendly hostess was welcoming😊

Service: within a few mins of being seated, the nice hostess noticed that we hadn’t been helped. So She took initiative to bring us water and take our drink order. Our server came over and introduced herself and took our order- and shortly after that we heard the manager encouraging the waitstaff to connect with their tables/customers- after which she came back and exchanged some friendly chit-chat. My daughter’s food came out more than a few mins before mine, but there was no silverware so she couldn’t start eating. My daughter got up to find our server and request a fork. The server brought 1 fork to our table and handed it to my daughter. At that time I asked for silverware as well. After a few mins the hostess brought us silverware and napkins. I also needed a knife for my waffle, but I didn’t even bother asking. The hostess checked on us and brought our bill when we asked for it- She was definitely more attentive than our server. Our server did come back when we were leaving and said something about why she couldn’t check on us but we were kinda over it.

Food: Chicken & waffles- was just okay. I was expecting juicy fried chicken and one of those fluffy belgian waffles but it wasn’t that. The chicken was fine but not delicious, and the waffle was like the ones I make at home on the waffle iron. Not bad, not good, just mediocre.

Shrimp and grits- 3 fried shrimp on top of a big bowl of underwhelming grits with a tablespoon of some sauce. The little bit of sauce was good, but the dish needed a lot more of it. We’ve never had Nola style shrimp n grits made this way. It’s usually bathed in a delicious gravy and the shrimp are not usually fried. The 3 shrimp were overly seasoned like they belonged on another dish- maybe a shrimp basket or poboy- and the grits barely had any flavor. They tasted like instant/quickgrits- not creamy or buttery at all.

Side of scrambled eggs- eggs were just okay. This might be because they had started getting cold from waiting on silverware.

French Toast- It was okay. We sent it back to be toasted/grilled more and they immediately fixed it. It came drizzled with a white sauce on the plate that was also just okay. It was sweet but we couldn’t determine exactly what flavor it was supposed to be. The sauce was also drizzled on the waffle plate.

Mimosa- was good.

We will drive/travel for food😋and We were really excited about this place because we have yet to find authentic La style cooking as good as we’ve had it in La. We had high expectations but we left highly disappointed. If I’m in the area again I might give them another go and try a sandwich or...