Dayali Restaurant

Very authentic Beijing cuisine. Very close to what you will taste at the Dayali restaurants in Beijing.

ONLY DEBIT AND CASH. Good, that’s out if the way.
3.5÷5. Decent pricing, but pricier than what you’d expect from regular Chinese restaurants. I ordered the Mixed Salad, and Beef and peppers (I’m not sure what it was listed as on the actual menu), while my friend ordered housemade noodles and braised eggplants. Together, it came to a bit over $ 36 after taxes.
Service was quick to get food to us, and they didn’t really ask us anything after they delivered it to us. Not atypical for a Chinese restaurant, so I didn’t mind! Gives us more time to chat uninterrupted :) The mixed salad arrived first, and was unexpectedly very tasteful and fresh. The dressing was complimented perfectly with the scent and crunch of peanuts. I recommend this dish the most at Dayali.
My dish came after and it wasn’t as good as I would have liked. The meat didn’t taste very fresh. It was chewy… like hard rubbery chewy. The peppers were okay. It had A LOT of oil. My friend’s noodles were decent and priced at an affordable price — just a note: they have bits of meat in the dish. The braised eggplants also had some meat in the dish. My friend is trying to be vegan, so she didn’t expect this. If you’re vegetarian or vegan, ask what’s strictly non-​meat first! We had a menu with pictures, but I guess the meat in the noodles was too small to be pictured clearly.
I wouldn’t come back here besides to introduce people to the salad. The interior is very nice though. Comfy chairs and a good amount of table space.

Food is very very good, a bit expensive.
Service could be better, but otherwise their Peking/​Beijing duck is really good, (dare I say) just as good as it was in beijing.

You do get what you paid for, even though it’s a bit pricey. Menu is quite vast so you get a lot of choices. Only thing that didn’t made sense to me was the «membership» thing. Note: Be sure to make a reservation.
In a tiny plaza/​square behind the T&T supermarket at Warden, where the Chatime is, you almost wouldn’t expect this kind of place to exist here. Parking lot is small so it can be hard to find a spot if you come here on the weekend, especially when that Chatime is always packed.
The restaurant itself is quite spacious, not what you would expect from the outside. Décor is also modern, clean, and very bright. The waiting area is a decent size for a Chinese place so you won’t be shoulder to shoulder with people hungry for a spot.
Dishes are a good size. Personally I think this place is good for groups and not a 1 on 1 dinner kinda thing. Must try is the Peking Duck and wrap; comes in a nicely organized presentation with a heater to keep the duck and wraps warm, which was a pretty simple but smart idea. We ordered a number of dishes since we had a bigger group but tbh pretty much everything on their menu (at least the ones you’ve heard about) are pretty good. They are a bit on the salty and greasy side, but as is with most Asian food.
Don’t think I’ll be a frequent customer but the dishes were pretty good. At least not something you can find everywhere in town.
Prepare to see the bill at a good number though because this place is not cheap.

Over decorated and priced food, with bland and stale taste.
Duck was not fresh, soggy and no flavours at all.
Worst was the service, impatient. RUDE and sloppy!
3 times here, not once an exception.
Piece of utter mainland crappy services imported from Beijing.
If you want the Beijing service, you can find it here!

One of my favourite games to play here is «Count how many Canada Goose jackets are in the restaurant.» Because, almost every other person and their mom is wearing one in this restaurant. Kind of ironic considering we’re all here to eat the peking duck, but I digress…
I’ve been here three times with different groups of friends and family members, and have deduced one thing. Come here for two things, and two things only: the peking duck and the sweet potato fries. They are delicious, made to perfection, and worth the visit, while everything else will leave you unsatisfied or completely underwhelmed (and you can get it at other restaurants for much cheaper.)
The service at Da Ya Li is probably the most disappointing thing about it. Servers speak little to no English, which would be fine, but are almost never there when you need them, and the food takes forever to arrive. Several times, we had to ask for extra eating utensils (because our table of 9 only had 5 plates,) refills of water, or something else that really should have been taken care of. For a place with astronomical prices compared to other Chinese restaurants that serve similar fair, you should have the customer service to back that sh*t up.
On a bright note, the peking duck is fantastic and filling and the atmosphere is lovely. My family bought the VIP card and it just wasn’t worth it for us, but do consider getting it if you’re going to be coming back often.

I’m not picky or a Beijing Roast Duck connoisseur so I only have compliments about their duck. The duck skin was crispy and tasted great; they serve the entire dish with cucumber, the wrap, the paste, and a green onion. There’s actually 2 different ducks you can order, the cheaper one just comes with that standard stuff (what I usually order).
This place is really popular and doesn’t allow reservations for less than 6 people, so I usually come for lunch and show up around 1hr after it opens on a weekend.
Service is decent, we were never really left waiting. Ordering is easy, you just check things off on a piece of paper.
In general, their dishes may seem a bit pricier compared to other places but I find them all very good. You can get a VIP card that gives you 10% off every dish, if you pay 20 $. The VIP card is valid for 2 years.

With the wave of immigration from mainland China, there has been an influx of amazing northern Chinese food in Toronto. All in all: Dayali is a fantastic place to get Peking Duck. We ordered the Signature duck dish — the duck skin was crispy, the meat was juicy. However, I have to say, they were a little stingy on some of the cucumbers and sprigs of spring onion, however the additions of spicy salt, deep fried noodles and dried cranberries were very unique.
The other dishes were also quite good. We ordered a vermicelli in soup, and it was delicious. There was a nice blend of flavours in the broth — some fish, some meat. The stir fried celery with cashews was good — the celery was crunchy and mildly flavoured. We ordered some stir fried beans in a hot pot, with some peppers that really packed a punch. We also ordered some xiaolongbao, which were unfortunately, terrible. The wrappers were dry and all the soup had leaked out of the dumplings ages ago.
Staff were brusque and efficient, but this is no different than any other busy Chinese restaurant.
And in terms of a wait, we arrived at 5:30PM on New Years Day, and waited maybe 15 minutes. Not too shabby.

Dayali’s on point with their peking duck! The duck was really moist and was just perfect with the hoisin and spring onion. The restaurant is nice and clean staff is attentive. Great chinese restaurant addition

This restaurant offers a unique take on Chinese dishes. The Peking duck is probably the best around Toronto. There are spicy toad legs (they are spicy and huge) and other really authentic and delicious dishes here. The food is more authentic and closer in style to China than HK Chinese food.
You will also notice that the menu has regular and VIP pricing. The VIP pricing is if you have their membership card (which you can buy).
Gets super busy but they do take (and honour) reservations for larger groups.

I came here on a Thursday night for a surprise 50^th bday dinner in the private room. First impression when I walked — very formal and elegant for a Chinese restaurant, wait staff distributed around the restaurant ready to serve the patrons.
We experienced some difficulty communicating with the hostess (her English wasn’t great) when we gave her the name for the reservation. When she finally figured out which reservation we were with she gestured in the direction of one of their party rooms. She didn’t escort but shouted to another waiter where we were going as we were walking over. Not the best first impression, service-​wise.
The party room was very nicely decorated with crown moulding, upholstered chairs, even fake props on the bookshelf. Each person was served a glass of ice water– a sign of things to come!
Somebody else from our party ordered so I can’t comment on what was on the menu but here’s what we ate. The first several courses came all at once: A dressed green salad (not bad, dressing was quite good), mashed yam mounds with blueberry sauce which looked identical to soft serve ice cream with blueberry sauce (okay), lotus root stuffed with glutinous rice (quite good), chicken in brown sauce (very good), tureen of rib soup (great flavour and spice), braised pig knuckle (okay), lobster (standard), spicy shrimp with cashews (really good!).
I liked that things were unexpected but well balanced. The dishes started on a sweet note, gradually moving to more intense flavour and spice. I particularly enjoyed the chicken and the spicy shrimp.
The next set of courses: Peking duck in 2 courses (skin only and then the meaty slices) with pancakes and condiments, steamed whole fish, trio of vegetables, frog legs stew, fried rice, Vancouver crab with chilli and Szechwan peppercorns. For dessert, fried pear shaped red bean dumpling. Everything was very good but the highlight was the duck for sure! Dishes were quite spicy and intensely seasoned… Lots or water glasses bring refilled and some people started tapping out!

Not as bad as I thought. Based on previous review I thought service would be terrible. Could be better though.
We had the Peking duck, the signature pears and some other dishes.
Cons:
No credit cards. Cash and debit only.
No wet wipes or hot towels with Peking duck. Had to go to washrooms to wash up.
Kind of pricey. Come on! They charge you for the sauce? That’s like McD charging you for ketchup with your fries.
Not enough pancake with your Peking duck. Only 10 pieces so if you have a bigger group, you are going to have to order more at cost.
Notes:
Service wasn’t that bad that we would pay no tips. Nobody gave us a refill on our tea but they did have someone pack our leftovers to take out. Lots of places leave you to do it.
Serving us dessert so early. Normally I don’t care but I was told by my dinner companion that when the golden pear gets cold, it’s not so good to eat. Would be nice if they served it near the end.
Pros:
Décor is nice. Waiters are uniformed but the manager/​owners were totally casual in T-​shirts and jeans. Saw them working the front desk coming in and going out. They did bid us good night and didn’t ignore us.
Food came pretty fast. Not the greatest duck but there was plenty of meat with the duck. My companion said that it was half a duck.
Lining up wasn’t bad. We went on a Sunday night around 6:30 and only waited 15 – 20 minutes? Wasn’t really keeping track but it wasn’t like lines out the door. Although all the tables were full.
In conclusion, it’s not as bad as I thought but a bit pricey. Good thing one of us had a VIP card to give us 10% discount. It’s nice to try but not some place I would regularly want to go to. I wasn’t wowed by it.
There’s underground parking in case you didn’t know.
Thank you

Love this restaurant’s menu. Everything is very new and atypical of Chinese cuisine, which I appreciate since most cuisines these days taste very similar. The ambiance of the restaurant is very refreshing and spacious; the menu consists of a myriad of duck and other dishes.
Definitely recommend their western style salad, mashed root vegetable with blueberry sauce, and their Peking duck! The spicy options are good too.
Although the food tastes good, I always have a sick stomach after the meal… Something about be oiliness of the dishes makes me feel ill.

Suckity suck suck.
Such a fancy layout yet the food stinks. They try to be all creative but it falls short. Never been so disappointed in a Chinese restaurant. I’d much rather visit first Markham place food court (which is pretty good tbh)
Hot and sour soup: nor hot or sour. Tasted weird as ever.
Blueberry yam: should have known something that looks like a sundae but is actually yam would suck but I’m adventurous. It was very sweet from blueberry jam and then you get weird warm yam flavors. Bizarre.
Soup dumplings: no soup. dry. Just oil inside.
Jellyfish: it was super hard like eating cartilage. Super intense black vinegar to boot. Best part of the dish was the cucumbers. can’t f*k that up right?
Peking duck: the cut of the pieces were all wrong. They try to make it different by giving you sides of fried potato pieces and dried cranberries. Just not good. The wrap were big and dry as well. Sucked.
Dumplings: probably from T&T frozen section. The only part of the meal that tasted like it should. Sucked.
Meat pie: at this point, we didn’t even wanna touch it.
I would rate this place negative if I could. I don’t know how many times I’ve said the work «suck». And not in a good way ;)
Please avoid for the sake of your stomach people!
#savethestomach

I came here mainly to eat Peking duck. We were a table of 7. We made a reservation so we didn’t have to wait in line. The line gets pretty long during dinner time.
The dishes here are very delicious and the presentation is great. I enjoyed the duck. We also ordered the signature dayali pear. It is a deep fried dough pastry, not actually a pear like we had initially thought. We also ordered sweet yams with blueberry. It was too sweet and it was served as an appetizer instead of a dessert which was a little funny to me, especially considering that the dish was cold too.
Price is reasonable too, about $ 30 for one duck. If you purchase a VIP card for $ 20, you get a discount off each dish. Their menu lists regular prices and VIP prices.

I like Dayali… but only for the Peking duck. The rest of the food is extremely greasy, subpar and lacking in flavour. Even my friends who don’t eat Chinese food that often can notice the difference between the food at Dayali compared to the food at other restaurants like Asian Legend in Toronto. As other reviewers have noted, the service at Dayali leaves much to be desired. I find if you don’t speak Mandarin, it is difficult to get anyone’s attention.
All this being said, I do like the Peking duck here. The duck here reminds me of the ones in Beijing, which is difficult to find here in Toronto. Unfortunately that’s the only thing that I like to eat here.
Also worth noting — the VIP card does not work at both Toronto locations. I.e. the Dayali card that you bought at the Gibson Drive location will not be accepted at the new Hwy 7 location.
Food — ⁷⁄₁₀
Service — ⁵⁄₁₀
Atmosphere — ⁸⁄₁₀
Value — ⁶⁄₁₀
Overall — 6.5÷10

Over priced. Décor is extremely misleading. The décor looks high end (by Chinese standards), but the food does not compliment that. Better ducks elsewhere. Significantly better noodles elsewhere. Some of the other dishes were too salty. Oh, did I mention the horrible service? The servers were great at walking around and walking around some more. They weren’t happy to be asked to clear empty dishes off the table. Definitely not helpful and less than useful. I’m not returning.

Literally so disappointed by this restaurant. We missions about 30 min from North York to get here for some Peking duck since it was named one of the best. When we first got there, we were pretty excited since it was pretty clean — surprising for a Chinese restaurant. When we looked at the menu, we found that a lot of traditional Chinese dishes were not present. One of my favourite soups, the corn soup, was not anywhere to be seen. Nor were any noodle dishes like really? No chow mein. In the end we decided on beef and egg soup, Kung pow shrimp, Peking duck — traditional, and the stir fry Chinese broccoli.
In terms of food, it was absolutely horrendous. The beef and egg soup contained so much cilantro that I could not even eat a scoop of it. The Kung pow shrimp was just bad. Had to wash it down with some sprite after. For the Peking duck, we were disappointed to say the least. Especially compared to the Peking Man restaurant that I reviewed before, the portion size was surprisingly small and did not come with many options. There was the bread dough thing with some sauce, green onion and cucumber. Gladly, they did give us some more when we requested it. Now the stir-​fry broccoli were the only thing that we could eat. It wasn’t very filling but we had to eat something.
Our bill totalled to about $ 100 for 4 people but it was definitely not worth the trip or the money. If you’re looking for a good Peking duck place I’d much rather suggest anywhere else but here.

This place was ok… nothing really stood out to me. The people who work there barely spoke English and it seemed like they didn’t want to help when we asked for something. Our initial server who spoke better English was good, but everyone else… it was like talking to a wall sometimes. Even while we were still in the middle of eating, the waitress brings us our bill and we weren’t even done.
Everything we ordered was basically, «just ok.» The Peking duck… there was nothing special about it and when we asked for more hoisen sauce, they said it cost 2 $?? Really? To just squeeze out something we can get at the grocery store?
Anyway, I could honestly say, the one thing I liked that I ordered was the spicy potato stack thing they had however there was no spice to it. Probably wouldn’t go back.

Came here for dinner last week and was disappointed about the duck and the signature breaded dayali pear with red bean. The duck was bland and dry. The signature dessert didn’t have much red bean filing. Got high expectations but were disappointed. Their other dishes were good. Taro roll with sesame dressing was the best. It’s crispy, hot and with just the right amount of filing and sweetness. Surprisingly, it wasn’t oily at all.
Came here for lunch today, but disappointed even though we didn’t order their signature duck and dessert. The wrappings of the steamed buns with meat filings were dry and thick. There weren’t any soup inside. Beef soup noodle had only a few small chunks of meat. The other dishes were all very oily. The service was awful. It’s slow and not attentive at all. The waitress never came back after the food were served, and our tea hadn’t been refilled. Disappointed by their service and the oily food today.