TAO Downtown Restaurant

I absolutely hate to leave low reviews but the experience that I had at Tao was just not what you’d expect for the caliber of the restaurant of this type. Starting off, I will say the food is really good! And the vibes were amazing. From the decor, to the music, to the atmosphere—it was all great for a Thursday dinner with my girlfriend. As amazing as the vibes were as well as the food—the service was ABSOLUTELY lacking. We went for a dinner and it was NOT a busy night AT ALL. You could see 2/3 servers just standing around at all time that day. Starting off our server didn’t seem like she was trained at all with the menu and service. My girlfriend has a gluten allergy and it made ordering extremely difficult with the server because she had absolutely no idea what was gluten free at all so every single dish that we ordered she ran back to the kitchen to ask and then took forever to come back to double check with us. So that made ordering extremely difficult and took absolutely forever due to the back and forth that she went from the kitchen to us. When the dishes were dropped she didn’t tell us which items were which so we had to just figure it out ourselves and it was our first time there so that just left a very sour taste in our mouths as well. Not to mention the drinks took over 20 minutes to arrive. All we ordered was 2 lychee martinis. Overall, probably wouldn’t be returning considering our first experience was so lacking.

Celebrated my birthday here with a small group of people. Restaurant itself is very beautiful and high class. The food is delicious- I highly recommend the lobster pad Thai, miso cod, spicy tuna on crispy rice and oysters. The waiter was very attentive and accommodating especially for one of my friends who has a gluten allergy. We all had a great time :)