Dayali

The food is microwaved, what restaurant does this? We order a few dishes, most of it taste not fresh, and one of them is cold, but the plate is warm, we asked the server, and she said, the dish is made in the morning by their chef, and they just microwave it, she can take it back and microwave is again. I would never go their again!

Came here on Sunday night at 850pm. Once we decided to order there’s no one around to take the order when we finally found someone he told us we have to wait 10 more mins because the chief is eating.

The food taste is good. However, the service is REALLY poor. They are not friendly, pretty arrogant. First, they made mistakes on my order. Then, several dishes arrived very late. They didn’t let me to use my credit card (can be used in Canada) or debit card (US bank), even I spend 200 dollars for lunch. Their currency exchange rate is 1:1 for US dollars. Please remember to bring Canada money.

I had been to this one three times. The food is great and tasty. Last time we went, one got food poisoning badly!
Dec 2015 I went and had dinner with friends. We ordered Deep fried Pear, Signature Roast Duck, Steamed Lotus Root Stuffed w Sweet Sticky Rice, Fried Sweet Potatoes w Salted Egg Yolk, and a Tofu soup with Egg Yolk. The food tasted good, so before we get the bill, we bought a membership card to save a bit.
However, one friend experienced food poisoning symptom around 2~3 hours after the dinner but the rest were okay as they did not eat much. From the packed dishes, we found the Tofu soup had the problem, a few slice of Tofu were BAD!
I give it a 3stars as the food tasted good and price is fair. But the food poisoning is not fun. I will not go there although I just got the membership.
I can give the membership away if anybody needs it.

Well, we did go on New Year’s Eve. So it’s possible that they were naturally short staff.
It was hard to flag someone and we had to return one of our dishes because it was too salty. They did redo it for us at no extra charge but it took awhile so I believe the cook section was short staff as well. Some of the dishes did not come with it’s own spoons and there was no spare chopsticks. I basically got them myself. Décor is nice so they got that going for them.
Nobody I saw looked like management. I’ve been to the Warden and Steeles location and there were 2 people at the register/​bar that stand out as the owners. They were dressed completely casual while everybody else was in uniform.
Out of the dozen dishes we had order, Only the Peking duck stands out. Which is their specialty so it should.
Ultimately, I would not go back here. Once is nice.
Thank you

Service, so bad. The stupid waitress prefer to leave the table reserved and unseated but not to share with others in the waiting line. Will not come back

great food. maybe im just used to it but I dont mind the impersonal service or the loud chatter. Been impressed both times I’ve been to this resto. Just make sure to make a reservation before hand because there is always a line.
Food is bit pricier than other chinese «banquet hall» style restaurants (with the big round tables).

The signature peking duck was a huge ripoff! For $ 32, all we got was a small plate of duck meat, some cucumbers, scallion, and peking duck sauce that was not authentic Peking duck sauce. For about half the price, I can go to a regular HK style restaurant and get their sliced duck which tastes better. The other items on their menu are somewhat fairly priced. Service is horrible compred to ther similar chinese restaurants.

I’ve had many Peking duck in the past and I really enjoyed this place. The skin is very crispy and not very fat. I’ve read many reviews about the service, I can’t say that we experienced bad service. Our tea pot was filled in a timely manner. I do think the place is over priced and the bad thing was the lobster. Very dry! We also had the fish cooked in oil and pepper. Whoa! Talk about dumping a jug canola oil in a bowl! The fish was good and not fishy. Overall I’d go back just for the Peking duck. :)

First, I’d like to start off with saying that Dayali has a membership card, and two locations. The membership card does not apply to both locations. It only applies to the location you bought it at. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure Dayali isn’t a franchise, so this separate membership card thing seems like a bit of a money grab to me.
Second, I’d like to mention that when we made our reservation, we were given two seating times: 4:30pm or 8:15pm. Okay then.
Third, the servers don’t know how to solve problems. We thought we didn’t order something that came to our table, so we asked the server who brought it. He said, «I don’t know», but made no effort to find someone who did. Along with this, they would make more money if they double-​checked what people ordered. My aunt tried to do them a favor and circle the items we ordered. She missed two. The servers didn’t check. Thus, there were two items we ordered that we ended up not getting, and deciding we didn’t want/​need anymore. I suppose this is both good and bad for us (I wanted those two dishes).
Finally, the food. Most of the food we had was just okay. We had a pork aspic, pig ear and bamboo shoot, duck tongue (more salad than tongue), fried meatballs (cute, small, juicy, crispy, but a tad salty), house special Peking duck (not worth the cost, but looks kinda special), taro rolls with some kind of sauce (sauce was missing and no taro taste, but this is a crispy, slightly sweet, yummy thing), chilled spinach with peanuts, homemade noodles in soup (half price menu section, but the more expensive half of half price… however that works), fish head with pancake, yellow croaker?, minced beef and tofu egg drop soup (good for price, but very little minced beef), duck bones with cumin (salty and not enough cumin to be called cumin flavored), sweet and sour pork ribs (not enough meat for the bones we got, and tiny ribs), boiled pork dumplings (nothing I couldn’t make at home), etc. There wasn’t anything particularly outstanding, or particularly good for the prices we paid. The fish head with pancake had a big fish head with very little meat. The pancake is like green onion pancake sans green onion, and the sauce was good, but for $ 30, I’m expecting more than starchy pancake and sauce.
All in all, I expected more. A lot more.

Their food is amazing, and so good. But I have to say service is really not that good. WE booked a reservation for 6:30pm and we didn’t get seated until well after 7pm. IN general service was quite slow. We ordered two orders of the peking duck — the duck is quite well roasted and the skin was crispy, so i would have to say for what they are known for, it was delivered up to standard. I also liked their toppings becuase it’s more than just the celery, cucumber and carrot that usually goes with it. WE also ordered this rish dish and it was AMAZING. It literally came in a RICECOOKER lol… the waitress mixed in the sauce and evyerthing but oh my gosh that rice was so tasty and delish! BEcuase of the huge wait and being so crazy busy and the seating atmosphere isn’t the greatest, I would come back eventually, but i’m not dying to come back, the food was great, i just wish their service was better.

The food itself is interesting — they serve Northern Chinese cuisine, and the plate sizes are a bit smaller than the usual Chinese «sharing» plates.
We tried the Peking duck, which was fine — it wasn’t anything that’ll blow your mind, but it’s served in a cute duck dish. Also tried the braised pork hock, which was fan-​TAST-​ic! Fall off the bone and the skin fatty-​noms. To offset all this fatness, we ordered the black fungus dish cooked in chicken broth, which was had a good crunch to it. Next was the fatty pork with white buns — so very fatty, so very delicious. This was the BF’s fave dish, and it really NEEDS those white buns — otherwise it’s just too intense of a dish! We finished off with a veggie dish in spicy oil. This was just SLATHERED in oil, and wayyy to overwhelming with the spice. Rather than waste it, I just rinsed off some of the oil/​spice with hot tea.
The service was not great. The wait was almost 40 minutes, and there was no reservations allowed of groups fewer than 7. Whenever we called the waiter over, there was never a smile or acknowledgement when we asked for something. Ex. Can we get more tea please? response: walks off.
Overall, the food was good in flavour, but simply too oily. The black fungus, the pork hock, the fatty pork — all of them were soaked in oil. This may be the style of cooking, but excessive all the same.

Came here with some guys from work. Had Peking duck (very nice!), some kind of fish in oil (ok, kinda weird — it was some fish in about a gallon of oil and hot peppers), something with taro paste that resembled deep fried rolls (dang, those were goooood), some garlic green beans (dang, I’m going to need a pack of breath mints.), pigs’ feet (fatty but fabulous), and shrimp (eaten with shell, due to laziness — call me spoiled, but I like my cooked shrimp to arrive peeled). Probably missing something besides that. The restaurant was clean and classy, and the food was quite good (though I admit I came in with lowered expectations due to other reviews). The service like most Asian restaurants was sub-​par and required flagging the server to get service, but that’s par for the course — I don’t think there’s a single authentic Chinese restaurant I’ve been to that takes things to the extreme with service like a Western (eg. Jack Astor’s) place would. Can’t comment about the value, since someone else paid, but definitely worth a return visit.
Probably a 3.5 stars but not much negative really here, so rounding up to 4.

I have come to this Dayali location several times since they opened, it can get quite busy on weekends so reservations are a must. though I find that even with reservations, you still have to wait 10 – 15 minutes for your table.
First off, Dayali offers authentic nothern Chinese food so it really is a hit or miss depending on your preference. some dishes can be too much for my liking.
One very popular dish at Dayali is their peking duck, which comes in two sizes. the smaller one is a small plate of duck, wraps and one plate of each topping (sauce/onions/cucumbers).the larger one comes with more toppings and slightly more duck, which is the one displayed very nicely in some of the pictures fellow Unilocalers have posted. You can add $ 3 to get a large bowl of duck soup which is very delicious and flavourful.
The prices here are very reasonable for their large portions, if you buy a membership card ($ 20, valid for one year) you get the discounted price on the menu, usually a few dollars off every item.
This restaurant is usually very busy and all of them speak mandarin, little to no staff speak/​understand cantonese and english; it is quite difficult to comminicate if you do not know the language. The décor in the restaurant is nice, but they do not do any upkeep, so you can tell that the décor gets quite dusty.

Summary: OVERRATED. Decent food bogged down by high prices and poor service.
My family has been planning to check this out for a while after all the hype. We were sorely disappointed.
Their signature Peking duck dish only comes with the duck skin wrap and no lettuce wrap. You get a duck bone soup or duck bones as a consolation prize. Not worth it at all.
We ordered 2 cold dishes (vinegar chicken and sweet and sour pork ribs) which were decent.
We ordered Chinese broccoli and a spicy cabbage with pork slices for veggies. They were tasty but too oily.
Shrimp fried in coconut bits was the best dish we had. Followed by lamb slices in sour sauce (pickled veggies) on a bed of glass noodles.
In general, most dishes were too oily or salty. Reminded me of the cooking in northern China. Think all those chili oil dishes that are really greasy.
Service was non existent. No one came to clear the empty plates or change our small plates. Dishes were served without any introduction so you didn’t quite know what it was.
Overall this was a disappointing experience. We were reluctant to leave a tip even though we were a party of 13. Thankfully we were seated next to clean dishes and napkins so we could serve ourselves.
I highly recommend going to Grand Lake Chinese Cuisine (Tai Woo) at Kennedy and Highway 7 for better Peking duck and seafood at very good prices.

The service was quite poor. They forgot several dishes and had to be reminded. The waitresses and waiters were very rude and walked away mid-​sentence. The food itself was mediocre and taste was just not present. The sauces and soups were all overly salty and ill prepared. The portions are reasonably sized and are adequate for sharing. Price wise, this place is not value for your $. The worst part of the meal was going in and seeing large rats at the front door, scurrying around, and coming out and seeing dozens of mice near the rocks. While there were none visible inside the restaurant, the facilities were poorly maintained. This place looks nice at first glance, but don’t let it fool you.
Food: ³⁄₁₀
Service: ¹⁄₁₀
Value: ¹⁄₁₀
Hygiene: ¹⁄₁₀
Aesthetics: ³⁄₁₀
I do not recommend this place and I will not be coming back anytime in the near future.

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.

Pretty fancy place inside, quite a few chandlers and they have 2 private room, it’s a small place tho, they don’t take reservations unless more than 6 ppl, we waited 45mins on a Monday night… major language barrier if you don’t speak mandarin or fluent cantonese, the waitress couldn’t even understand me when I requested more tea… service is pretty shitty here, they barely came over to take our empty plates away
On the good note, the food comes out reallyyyyy quick surprisingly, the duck was the highlight of the night obviously since this place specializes in duck… the duck was very juicy and tender, extra wraps are $ 4 for 10 ppl, the homemade noodles were good as well, other than that everything was either mehhhhh and nahhhhhh
Pretty pricy of you don’t have a VIP card here, thankful we had one
I would only come back here just for the duck and the noodles
Oh yea another good think about this place is that they have a picture menu book for us illiterates lol

I had wanted to try Dayali for so long, so my expectation could be too high, but our first lunch visit was disappointing. We got a table fast. The services was effective if lukewarm. The food was below expectation. The white transparent noodle was too spicy (2 stars). It was more spicy than Indian food. The fried rice was just bad — some bites of rice was raw; it tasted bland; there was barely any minced meat. It was seriously over priced at $ 6 (1 star). The meat pie was the only shining star of this meal. It tasted rich. (4 stars).
Overall, 2 stars.

Dayali newest location just opens up in Richmond Hill.
The interior feel a lot more spacious and with more small tables good for 2 or 4 people which is welcoming since reservation is not accepted for 5 or more people.
Obviously, one should be ordering Beijing Roast Duck but for tonight I decided to try out other items on their huge menu.
Stewed Large Meatballs in Brown Sauce ($ 3) 狮子头 — A-​OK but was a little cold when served
Sauteed Shredded Pork in Sweet Bean Sauce ($ 9.99) 京醬肉絲 — standard
Stir-​Fried Pea Sprouts ($ 9.99) 清炒豆苗 — standard
Steamed Buns with Meat Fillings ($ 6.99) 特色小籠包
Rice Noodle in Spicy and Sour Broth ($ 3.29) 酸辣粉 — lack spiciness or sourness, cheap carb filler
Signature Breaded Da Ya Li Pear ($ 2) 金鸭梨 — My favourite item of the meal, #everythingtastebetterdeepfried
Though there were only 2 tables at 9:15 pm, 45 minute before closing, The kitchen was extremely slow. I almost want to leave when the steamed buns and pear just took forever to be ready.
Might be back again for other items. Hours of opening though was odd since they closes 10 pm daily, a little early for Chinese restaurants?
Waitstaff is super nice, really apologetic for the slowness of the kitchen and even let me yell at him a little.