East by Southwest

"I have been coming here for awhile now. Every time I'm in durango. I always wanna eat here even when other don't. I love their happy hour prices and the amazing service every time. We sometimes bring the whole family and WOW I couldn't ask for more. Can wait to go again."

"I realized last night that my husband and I have been going to East by Southwest for 10 years! We are never disappointed! The wait was long but it was a holiday weekend, the place was packed, and I heard they were training new staff. That being said, the service was great, our waiter checked on us many times, and the food was delicious as always. We’ll be back again soon!"

"I waited about 2 weeks to write this review. I wanted to see if the owners would contact me on their own accord, considering that I made some complaints the night I was there. If I were the owner, I definitely would have followed up with a customer that head such a bad experience at my restaurant. Clearly, the owner of East by Southwest doesn't care. I also wanted to wait to see if if my opinion of the evening would change over time. Sometimes it does. Sometimes I have a bad experience and then I think about it later and I am less upset about it. But, that did not happen here. In fact, the more I thought about it, and the longer I waited, The Worst it got. I think of myself as a pretty fair but mostly easy reviewer. You see, I enjoy just about everything that I try and every place that I go. You really have to do something pretty seriously wrong to get a bad review from me. This restaurant gets a bad review. First let me set some background. I came with my family. We were coming to ride The Polar Express, the train that the Durango Silverton train runs in the winter to give families The Polar Express experience. We wanted to have a special night out. And we really thought that picking East by Southwest would be a slam dunk. I mean how could we go wrong, really, based on everything we heard. But the truth is they just didn't care whether we had a good time or not. So let me give you the bottom line up front. (BLUF). From the get-go, our waitress did not listen to us, and the result was bad service. The food tasted bad. The food did not come out all at once. In fact, one meal came out 45 minutes after all of the other meals. It only came out at all because we brought it to their attention. They had completely forgotten to feed one of their guests. The food was enormously overpriced. The quality of the food was low. In one case, the sushi tasted extremely fishy like it had been sitting around too long. And at the end of the meal, we discovered that the owners charge a surcharge it is not listed in the prices, does not go to the staff, and isn't apparently attached to any particular service or food quality. In short, the owner decided to keep prices low by adding a surprise surcharge to the meal. Now some details. Our server wasn't very attentive. She couldn't remember what we ordered. She couldn't get our meals out on time. She forgot one of our meals all together. And then she left before we were done eating. Someone else had to come and take over her station. The food was pretty poor quality. Frankly, we didn't enjoy it. The worst of it was a spider roll with fish that tasted so bad we didn't finish it. The other pieces of sushi were edible, but nothing special. The teriyaki chicken was pretty good, but everything that they put on the plate with the teriyaki chicken was pretty bad. I can only even know if I could identify what some of the things were. It was some kind of Southwest Asian egg roll thing that didn't taste like integral, and didn't taste like southwestern food. It just tasted blah. Even the fried rice we ordered came out Bland and flavorless. I would say it had no texture, but the truth is it had a mono texture to it - mush. That's not really what you want in fried rice. And I would have thought that a restaurant with as much hype as this one could get something simple like fried rice correct. Then additionally, they forgot one of our party's meals. It was another 45 minutes or possibly an hour before my son-in-law was able to eat his dinner. So, the food was bad, the food didn't come out, the staff really didn't care, and all in all it was a terrible experience. Then, they tacked on a surcharge just to put an exclamation point on the end of a bad experience. Bottom line, just don't go here. You will be disappointed if you do."

"Last night Dale gave us the BEST experience we could have ever asked for. He gave 150% effort while waiting our tables & the tables around us during our reservation at 6:30pm on 11/17/23. Dale has multiple good suggestions for sake, sushi & desert. The Tiramisu was hands down the best light desert after a hearty meal of fresh Eel & Ramen! Dale even went out of his way to run down the street to give us our take-home bowl of ramen we had accidentally left at our table. Definitely the most memorable dining experience I have had in Durango. We will be coming back soon."