tell me about it

Joel recommended Tao’s to me the other day. I’d heard about it before from another friend who’d been really enthuasistic about this newfangled cheap seven-course meal, and N* had heard that the service there was brilliant. Joel came back and corroborated all this so we headed there on our monthly sojourn for good food.

It’s located at Paradiz Centre, and just a short walk down from Dhoby Ghaut MRT.

Unfortunately I forgot to take lots of photos. Took just a few. I was too overwhelmed by the good food and fabulous service. The staff are over-eager to explain their menu to you and are equally ready to recommend the house specials. We didn’t always pick the house specials, sometimes going with our own gut feeling (my gut feeling was “hungry”) and sometimes it was a hit, sometimes an only-almost-there. But altogether pretty darn good.

We started off with a sweet mango sorbet to whet the appetite, followed by a lovely bacon and mushroom gratin which was hot and wasn’t too savory (a good thing) and came with the cutest little utensil to spoon it up. It soon disappeared. Sigh.

The thing about Tao’s is that the servings are pretty darn small. This is a good and bad thing. The bad thing is that the food is so good that you feel awfully upset when you realize you’re scraping the bottom of the plate and there’s none left; and you sit there and stare at the empty plate disconsolately (until the next serving comes and you perk up again). The good thing is that if the servings were any bigger, you’d run out of stomach real estate by the time you reach the main course. Which I almost did.

Ahem. I get ahead of myself. The second course - a tantalizing “Farm Boy Splendor” (pictured) and a fruit salad. The “Farm Boy Splendor” was a recommendation and it was a hit. It was a salad tossed with balsamic vinaigrette topped with slices of cold chicken - the vinaigrette was tart and the veg light and fresh. The fruit salad was crab stick salad atop chopped fruit in a creamy dressing. While not a house recommendation, I absolutely loved it (I love anything fruity yum). Again, a feeling of grief passed over me when the plates yawned back emptily at me. Sniff. Such loss. I had to start pacing myself and stop inhaling down my food.

The grilled mushrooms were next - strips of I-don’t-know-what-mushroom drizzled with teriyaki sauce. Tasty but not spectacular; the mushrooms tended to be a tad rubbery, but the teriyaki sauce covered its inadequacies which weren’t enough to call the dish anything less than not bad.

There will never be a pumpkin soup that matches up to the heavenly brew they dish up at Giuseppe (incidentally just across the road from Tao’s) but that doesn’t stop me from trying. The pumpkin soup (pictured) was actually pretty darn good, with a drizzle of cream that perked me up happily. The bowl was cute too; a ceramic pumpkin. Kitsch, but had me cooing over it. The shark-fin melon herbal soup (which, we were heartily assured, did not contain any real shark’s fin [as if it were a good thing :P]) was forgettable. What shark-fin melon herbal soup? What? See, I’ve already forgotten it. Nothing special.

For our main entrées we picked the house recommendations, the slow-cooked baby pork back ribs (pictured) and the marinated lamb. I’d gotten rave reviews about the ribs from my brother so I’d already expected it to be good and it didn’t disappoint. The meat was so tender and soft it fell away easily from the bone in brown strips of yum. The tiny pitcher of sauce was excellent to go along (not the pitcher but the sauce). The lamb was also yummy though not quite on the same level as the ribs, and the mint sauce suited it perfectly, as mint sauce and lamb are wont to do. After eating 3/4 of my ribs dish though I felt a bit gelat having eaten too much meat and I couldn’t finish it. My server teased that he would refuse to serve my dessert until I finished every mouthful, so I snuck it onto N*’s plate and beamed cherubically at my server when he came back.

I got my (just) desserts. :D

The crème brûlée was recommended and was a definite yes, with the requisite (perfectly) caramelised top. We forewent the recommended sesame pudding though and decided on the poached pear instead - I do so love my poached fruit. Pear compote, apple compote, stewed peach…I love, love, love cooked fruit. And this pear came drenched in tart cinnamon sauce with an extra pitcher on the side. I nearly died, so transported was I into rapt ecstasy at the tasting of this dish. My server came around and offered me a free second helping - and who was I to resist? So I had two poached pears :D Oh, the heaven. I would have preferred the pear sliced up neatly; though the presentation scored high with the pear poached whole, it was difficult to remove portions with my spoon to eat. So, uh, I picked it up like a savage and bit into it with cinnamon sauce running down my chin.

I deny everything.

The drinks were perfectly adorable too, served in a little plastic jug (which looks a bit tacky amidst the lovely pottery plates) along with a tiny pottery teacup. The ice rose apple tea is deeeelish, my personal favorite. The ice peach tea is also yummy, and we reached a happy medium by blending the two. The drinks come with a little fork so you can pry open the jug covers and eat the fruit inside. It’s the thought that goes into the presentation that really makes a difference.

The “free” drink is a hot tea which comes with free refills. I don’t particularly like hot Chinese teas so I approached this with reservations but to my delighted surprise this was light and redolent of summer berries. We enquired as to the type of tea and were told that it was a special blend of green tea and berry tea from Taiwan. It really was very good, and N* thinks the hot tea outstrips the cold (though for me it’s the other way around, the rose apple tea *swoon* was so very good, and I do like ice teas).

The servers were friendly and helpful and boisterous, and I applaud Tao’s hiring policies because they are definitely picking the right people. I seriously contemplating tipping despite the already-levied 10% service charge, but cheap though the seven-course meal is, a poor college student am I, so regretfully I had to deny them an extra tip. My change and receipt was delivered to me in an envelope. Another unique thing.

I have to mention their serving dishes which, I hear tell, is Tao Tzu pottery plates. They are very pretty and their presentation is gorgeous. Every dish looks almost too good to eat (although I was so eager to eat that I forgot to take pictures at the start).

And we got baby hongbaos with milk chocolate coins inside, compliments of the season; as well as a card that entitles me to 10% off the next time I go.

The price ($28.90++) is very decent for a seven-course meal of the calibre served at Tao’s, but of course too pricey to eat too often. I would love to go back and try the other dishes though.