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DIORA - What an awful experience we had there!!!

We (party of eight) stopped at DIORA to celebrate the birthday of a mutual friend.

Overall, food was not great: salads were very average and tiny, chicken "tabaka" was fatty and stale and chicken kebab was cold and greasy. The dancing was marginal at best (no live music, the dance floor is covered with carpet).

But the main problem with the place was the "soviet era" service or lack of it.

As an appetizer, we ordered 8 "Uzbek" pirogis ("samsa"): 2 with lamb and 6 with beef because 6 members of our group have allergies to lamb meat. When we discovered that all samsa pirogis were made with lamb, we sent the order back. The owner and the waitress started to get obnoxious with us refusing to replace the pirogis and insisting the order was completed to the specs. That was clearly not the case because one of the ladies in our group started to develop the signs of allergy (choking...etc.).

And that was not the end of it: the charges for all pirogis were included in the bill. When we asked to remove the charges from the bill for the food that we sent back, the owners (* wife* specifically) started to humiliate us and threaten to call the police to make us pay for the faulty pirogis.

When police arrived, the officer asked the owners to remove the charges for the pirogis from the bill and they refused. The officer then tried to settle in the middle, asking the owners to split the charges 50-50 (which we agreed to) and the owners refused again. Finally, the officer asked the owners to cook us another set of pirogis, which we agreed to pay in full. The *wife* disappeared in the kitchen for 10 minutes and when she came back, she held a box with miraculously produced, partially bitten pirogis (who can tell who tried them), asking to pay the full price for what was in the box. Police officer was shocked and so were we.

After 2.5 hours of wait we paid half the price by cash and at that time the owner refused to process the payment through the register and give us the receipt (he also refused to sign the bill and list the name of his restaurant on the bill). We had to call the police this time to make sure our payment goes on record.

Overall, it was a spoiled birthday; all that times the waitresses, joining the chorus with the owners, were rude, yelling at us, and pulling the tablecloths from the table where we set.

I advise you NOT have the same experience.

That shouldn't be too hard

_________________
...defended from strong temptations to social ambition by a still stronger taste for tripe and onions." Screwtape in The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis

Fuckerberg on Food

One always wonders when someone only has one post but the incident is backed up by a police report:

http://www.vbg.org/Archive.aspx?ADID=1053

nice research, kenji. That this really happened is both sadder and funnier than the alternative.

_________________
...defended from strong temptations to social ambition by a still stronger taste for tripe and onions." Screwtape in The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis

Fuckerberg on Food

That's one of the downsides of suburban life....local police blotters/websites...you can't easily have altercations or public incidents without everyone and their brother finding out.

Whereas in Chicago proper.....

another fact of Suburban life seems to be that the police don't know the difference between Uzbekistan and Mongolia.

_________________
...defended from strong temptations to social ambition by a still stronger taste for tripe and onions." Screwtape in The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis

Fuckerberg on Food

Actually, where Diora is now used to be called Mongolian House, so maybe that was the police's frame of reference. Silly that I even know that, but I grew up about .5 mile away from there.

How were the portions?

Best. Reply. Ever.

Wow! What are the odds of this? Lamb is a very uncommon allergen and the fact that 6 people in one group were all allergic to it blows my mind. In fact, according to Food Allergy.org, milk, egg, peanut, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, and wheat account for 90% of all food allergies.

Still, given the fact that the restaurant's menu clearly states that the samsas are made with "minced lamb" (and no option for beef is shown), I would have probably just avoided ordering them all together, rather than make a special request at a place I'd never been before. But hey, that's just me.

=R=

_________________
I just wanna live until I gotta die. I know I ain't perfect but God knows I try. --Todd Snider

Twitter: ronniesuburban

Since it hasn't been done yet:

Diora
1034 Weiland Road
Buffalo Grove, IL
847.419.0400
http://www.diorarestaurant.com/

Oh, and also:





My kind of place.

Thanks a lot-- I just wasted half an hour reading that police blotter and my stomach hurts from laughing. They sure keep the police in Buffalo Grove busy:

I need one of these. And a liulya-kebab.

In fact, for people with a severe food allergy the source of which has not yet been identified, lamb is often prescribed as part of a severely limited diet, precisely because it is on a small list of foods (along with rice and pears) that almost never cause an allergic reaction. This dinner/ birthday celebration may have been a meeting of the only 6 people in the world with a lamb allergy.

_________________
...defended from strong temptations to social ambition by a still stronger taste for tripe and onions." Screwtape in The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis

Fuckerberg on Food

I was thinking the same thing. Also, how can chicken be "stale"?

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I was also thinking the same thing, but then realized that the allergy might be genetic, and at a birthday party many of the guests might be related. At any rate, it seems odd that the owners would call the cops over such a trivial dispute. Although after reading the BG police blotter, I am just glad I don't pay taxes there. I wonder how much a dispute over 6 dumplings ended up costing the village. What is weird, is that this thread makes me more inclined to check out Doria than to avoid it. You know you are an LTHer when....

Succès de scandale!

Hi,

Kashmar - what a nightmare for everyone involved.

Dumplings are rarely made fresh to order. To summarily order dumplings without a constituent ingredient doesn't mean they can be conjured up. Too bad the restaurant didn't have the experience to simply decline this request of their customer. And to take a small loss by deleting it from a bill instead of enduring all these negative consequences.

I have seen occasions where people developed allergies to foods they didn't want to eat. It was an excuse to get out of something few would argue about.

Those who travel to other websites, did this drama unfold elsewhere, too?

d4v3 - Let me know your plans, I might just meet you there.

Regards,

_________________
Cathy2

"You'll be remembered long after you're dead if you make good gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits." -- Nathalie Dupree
Facebook, Twitter, Greater Midwest Foodways, Road Food 2012: Podcast

I wish someone would have caught all this on video and posted it on YouTube.

You bring the liulya-kebab; I'll bring the silly string.

yelp

http://www.yelp.com/biz/diora-restaurant-buffalo-grove

From the menu:




They obviously offer three varieties of samsa, and samsa with a beef filling instead of a lamb one is one of the choices.

Hi,

I see it was posted on April 11th. I guess when she didn't get traction there, then we were the next best stop.

My name for this type of consumer complaint plastered all over the internet is 'scorched Earth.' They will leave no website uninformed of their tragedy. This event happened on April 4th and they are still itching to fight on April 18th.

Interloper - just saw your quote of the menu. Wish I was the fly on the wall to understand what really happened.

Regards,

_________________
Cathy2

"You'll be remembered long after you're dead if you make good gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits." -- Nathalie Dupree
Facebook, Twitter, Greater Midwest Foodways, Road Food 2012: Podcast

When it's being described by a non-native English speaker. There are many things about this story that ping my BS-o-meter, but this isn't one of them.

I stand corrected on the availability of beef samsas but I still find it more than a bit dubious that 6 people were allergic to lamb.

Whatever the case, if it were me, I would have simply paid and left. I cannot believe that anyone would make such a big stink over $4, $8 or even $12 but would willingly wait 2.5 hours to 'settle' the issue.

=R=

_________________
I just wanna live until I gotta die. I know I ain't perfect but God knows I try. --Todd Snider

Twitter: ronniesuburban

I'm with you. Plus it would've been much more satisfying to disgustedly throw a wad of bills on the table and storm out than to sit there for 2 hours taking the staff's abuse like a chump.

What I find really bizarre is that people would run their restaurant in such an unprofessional manner as to make themselves look like characters from an SCTV sketch.*



*Yes, this is a cheap shot but I love the clip so I'm posting it.

I see people behaving more or less like that all the time. Maybe not in restaurants but in retail stores, where they'll park themselves as long as it takes to get a refund on some cheap thing they clearly didn't even buy at that store, or something like that. Just last week I was in line at Jewel behind a guy who was not going to move until he got a discount based on some sign he'd misread and a coupon he didn't have. He was so self-righteous about it; the more clearly he was in the wrong, the more self-righteous he got. People who do this kind of thing always say they're going to tell everyone, too.

Oftentimes negative stories by first time posters encourage me to try the restaurant, in this case one I've never heard of. Thanks for bring Diora to my, and many others I'm sure, attention.

Regards,
Gary

Diora
1034 Weiland Road
Buffalo Grove, IL
847.419.0400
http://www.diorarestaurant.com/

_________________
Sauce on the side, always, implied, axiomatic..........never a doubt, BBQ sauce without.

Low & Slow

Personally, I've noticed a distinct increase in the amount of people using the term "allergy" to mean "severe dislike".