Komodo: $16 Water, A Service Fee and Sitting in Your Neighbor’s Lap. And So Can You!

Well, you can likely tell where this is going.

Komodo, a Miami import from Groot Hospitality, serves a Southeast Asian-inspired menu with lots of panache. This restaurant sits at the bottom of The Epic Dallas, a high-gloss, 8-acre, mixed-use office and residential space and hotel with several club/restaurants on the ground level, including La Neta (from Las Vegas) and Harper’s, a local restaurant from Milkshake Concepts. All the restaurants here are peacocks with a talon in the club end of the pool.

This is all on the west end of Deep Ellum, near where The Gypsy Tea Room once thrived, when grunge and live music were the draws of the area. Alas, things have changed. The come-as-you-are vibe has been razed.
I nabbed reservations for two at Komodo several weeks out, at 8 p.m. on a Tuesday, which was pushing curfew but it turns out you age yourself with 6 p.m. dinner reservations.

Exiting the car at valet, the only nearby parking option, you learn the valet fee is $10 (although a lot of reviews mention $15, not sure if that was because it was a Tuesday). Other high-end steakhouses in Dallas, Nick and Sam’s and Town Hearth, offer free valet, but a tip is expected, obviously. So, despite this massive development with its very own multilevel parking garage that you could throw your keys at and hit, you’ll need to pay someone else to park your car on top of the tip.

This was the first point in the evening where the line between being a guest and a sucker was smudged.

But if you're worried about the $10 to park, buckle up.

The restaurant is quite impressive, even from the outside. A doorman opens the large wooden doors and three hostesses with iPads at their fingertips greet you. Adjacent to the hostess stand is a Peking duck frying station with naked and fried red fowl hanging from hooks. It's real in here.
Passing the bar into the main dining space feels a bit like walking across the dance floor at the club before the vodka and Red Bulls kick in. Many of the tables are big half-moons, great for dates or fun work dinners. It's loud and dim, with streaks of lipstick red lights and lots of laughing.

We follow our hostess farther and farther to a back corner of the restaurant to the point our smiles morph into curious looks of surely-we’re-not-being-taken-to-a-back-corner. At the end of the journey, our hostess waived her long arm to the middle of three small tables, next to a couple who was already working on their entrées. I shimmied between the tables to the banquet-side seat.

After we sat down an awkward hush fell over our corner. I gave a shrug and "sorry" glance to the young couple next to us. It felt like being put at a corner table in the junior-high cafeteria when we got too loud.

Soon, another couple joined us, so now we were six. It took a few minutes for us to figure out our noise levels. Topics were chosen a bit more carefully for the sake of our new friends as we tried to talk over the near club-level music while not drowning out the other convos. 

A server soon arrived and leaned in close to ask if we wanted still or sparkling water. My date said still, I said sparkling. Silly. Me.

Our main server soon arrived, dressed in all black with his cup filled to the rim with eagerness. He did the intros and went over a few particulars in morning announcements style. The prior squatters were already wrapping up their dishes but were patient during this interlude.

I was ready to split within 10 minutes, given the reservations weeks in advance, the hoopla in getting ready (I ran an iron over my black Old Navy dress and my friend pulled out an old bridesmaid dress and lace gloves). There was also the valet, our corner and the prices. The CarFax report wasn't lining up.

However, our water glasses never knew thirst, as a slew of servers, all in black, danced around us; it didn’t hurt (or help) that there was a serving station just to our left where workers would rush-whisper to each other while grabbing pitchers of still water.

We stuck with waters and got an order of Money Bag dumplings (four for $30), slightly translucent globes of pork and shrimp with tobiko, which is flying fish roe: tiny florescent-orange bursts of the sea. A shower of gold confetti flakes had rained down on these little purses. These were a bit small and salty but good.

We passed on the $105 Peking duck and ordered one of the few vegetarian options, wild mushroom lo mein ($38), which was a spectacular dish. No one tell this lo mein that it’s not a pasta dish at a high-end Italian restaurant. We savored every bite of the medley of mushrooms rich with whisper-thin Parmesan and truffle oil. We never twirled chopsticks so passionately. A server, thinking we were finished, grabbed the dish with two mushrooms left and we cried a little (but quietly, so as not to disturb our neighbors).
I soon asked for our bill and our server was genuinely frazzled, possibly hurt. He paused for a second and told us he hopes we come back one day for the full Komodo experience.

Likewise.

It wasn't until the next day that I looked over the receipt carefully. Turns out I drank $16 in sparkling water: two bottles worth. After thinking about it, I recall a bucket near the table. Was that bottle service? For sparkling water?

Plus there was a 3% service fee on the bill, which is an oft-debated topic. Of course, every server deserves a living wage and benefits, especially when guests drink $16 in water, but the service fee line item always feels underhanded, even though it's printed at the very bottom of the menu. But to the point, it's in the fine print.

So, for water (some sparkling), four dumplings, a mushroom lo mein, tip, valet (another tip) we spent a touch north of $125.

And you can too! That, our friends, is the good word at Komodo.

We wrote Groot Hospitality three times about the seating since the experience is such a strong part of their brand: the words “unique” and “one-of-a-kind” are used on the website. We also asked what the service fee is for. We received only one response from their public relations company, acknowledging the email and saying they were working on a response. Which never came. We're sure they're crying in their duck fat over the idea of losing another $125 and an hour to us.

So, why didn’t we just ask to move? Perhaps to the section of seating right next to us that was completely empty? Especially since there were at least 50 workers buzzing around — surely, they could have staffed another table.

Well, because that never works. It would have made dinner more awkward. Mostly, it would have been rude to my corner gang, and while I may be a sucker for sparkling-water bottle service, I stick with my people. For as long as I reasonably must, anyway.

As for the service fee, well, I didn't look closely enough at the receipt at the table to notice it, not that I would have argued over the $2.52. Again, I was uncomfortable and evidently a bit dehydrated given the two bottles of sparkling water I tore through in less than an hour.

We did hit the restrooms on the way out, which was fun. There's a long, dark walkway lined with sheer, billowy curtains leading to a unisex restroom. It's an interesting scene.

Literally everyone else in the place looked like they were having an amazing time.

Komodo, 2550 Pacific Ave., Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday, 5–10 p.m.; Thursday – Saturday, 5–11 p.m.; closed Monday.