Ladies and Gentlemen, the Worst Restaurant In Dallas

Photo: Instagram.

Bilt, or Bilked?

Komodo Dallas at The Epic Falls Flat

One of the advertised perks of the Bilt credit card is access to cardholder-only dining events. In January, I signed up for my first: a three-course prix fixe dinner at Komodo, the Miami-born Asian fusion concept now operating in Deep Ellum.

It will also be my last.

Would I return to Komodo? No. Would I sign up for another Bilt “exclusive” at a restaurant I hadn’t already visited? Absolutely not.

Arrival: A Masterclass in How Not to Greet Diners

Komodo’s Dallas location sits within The Epic, a mixed-use development in Deep Ellum whose name promises grandeur and delivers farce. Epic Fail would be a better name. The restaurant is tethered to the complex’s valet service, a partnership that immediately undermines the dining experience—and one Komodo appears powerless, or unwilling, to fix.

We pulled up to the valet stand and waited. And waited. After several minutes of being ignored, I walked the short distance to the podium to find the valet—leaning on the stand, absorbed in his phone. Parking our car seemed an inconvenience. Service was not forthcoming.

The cost: $10 upfront, followed by a digital POS screen suggesting gratuities starting at 30 percent. Thirty percent—for doing nothing. Whether this was laziness, lack of training, or institutional indifference hardly matters. What matters is that Komodo’s guests bear the cost.

If I were running Komodo’s Miami headquarters, I would consider this unacceptable brand damage. Either demand a valet service that understands hospitality or stop paying rent to a landlord that doesn’t.

Inside the restaurant, we learned Komodo’s workaround: they no longer validate parking. They used to. They stopped. If this restaurant intends to survive in Dallas, validation needs to return—immediately.

Service: Well-Meaning, Poorly Managed

We ordered from the Bilt event menu—presumably a subset of the regular offerings—along with a bottle of wine. From there, the evening unraveled.

Courses arrived out of sequence. A Korean fried chicken main appeared before the spring roll appetizer. The wine arrived halfway through the entrée—at room temperature. There is no sommelier. The general manager, whose job it is to prevent exactly this kind of breakdown, was nowhere to be seen.

Our server, Alex, was earnest and polite, but inexperienced. He reminded me of myself at

that age: willing, but unaware of what constitutes a serious service failure and how to triage one when everything starts going wrong. That guidance should have come from the GM, who either had the night off or was hiding in the back office. In Dallas, the best steakhouses understand this truth: strong front-of-house leadership is non-negotiable. Komodo does not.

The Food: Uneven at Best

The Komodo Chicken Salad was a study in monotony. Vast in size and utterly bland, it consisted of repetitive layers of cabbage and wonton strips with little sense of seasoning or balance. Three-quarters of it went into a doggie bag—and may only be served to our dog as punishment.

The Korean Fried Chicken had a flavorful coating, but it sat atop anonymous, mass-market chicken with no intrinsic taste or texture. Sauce can only do so much. Ingredients matter. Tomorrow I take this to the homeless guy at Haskell and I-75.

The Shrimp Roll, however, was genuinely good: crisp exterior, earthy shrimp filling, and a five-spice honey that—while indulgent—worked.

The standout dish of the night was the Branzino. Properly cooked, with appealingly earthy flesh, it was complemented by Thai herbs and a piquant sauce ringing the plate. The salmon roe was used too sparingly, but this was the one dish that suggested a competent kitchen might exist somewhere behind the scenes.

Dessert and the Final Breakdown

We both ordered the lava cake. One bite was enough.

Heavy, dull, and joyless, it offered little flavor or pleasure. By contrast, the accompanying ice cream was excellent—clearly housemade and reminiscent of well-executed PacoJet work. Someone in that kitchen knows what they’re doing. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the person responsible for dessert.

Even stranger was the wait. The time between finishing our mains and receiving dessert—an item requiring no cooking, only plating—exceeded the time it took us to eat the first two courses combined. A junior food runner eventually appeared to explain that the kitchen was short-staffed.

If the kitchen is short-staffed, why does the handheld POS insist on a minimum 20 percent tip? Why isn’t there some acknowledgment—financial or otherwise—that the guest is subsidizing systemic failure?

I tipped the 20 percent, mostly to escape.

Verdict

Groot Hospitality—the corporate owner—has earned a place on my personal no-return list. “Hospitality” is an ironic name for an operation where management appears disengaged, service systems are broken, and accountability is absent.

The dining room skewed young, which may explain some tolerance for chaos. Older diners (over 30) —those with broader culinary reference points—appear to have already voted with their feet.

Komodo Dallas is not just disappointing. It is dysfunctional. And until management decides that details, leadership, and guests actually matter, no amount of branding or buzz will save it.