Tao Review
From Moscowiki
| Tao |
Cuisine: Chinese
Address: 2nd Brestskaya ul., 37, str. 1 (entr. from Bolshaya Gruzinskaya)
Metro: Belorusskaya
Tel: 250-0336, 251-0332
Open from 10:00 until 23:00.
Kung Hei Fad Choy!
By Neil McGowan
Happy Chinese New Year! Welcome to the Year of the Monkey! And in perfect time for the festivities a new Chinese restaurant joins the bustling throng of Asian eateries in town - Tao. It's not hard to find Tao, since it looks like the film set for "Shogun" - adding a little oriental colour to the dismal Brezhnevian lines of Bolshaya Gruzinskaya. Chinese restaurants in Moscow seem to fit one of two groups - cheap'n'crappy trying to be cheap'n'cheerful or high-end with pricing only within the budget of a Triad Headman or his Russian partners. The combination of delicious food, alluring venue, pleasant service and cardio-friendly bills seems to have eluded most places - until now.
The building is purpose-built, enabling the designers to create a sharply defined aura in which you're enveloped as soon as you cross the threshold. Black-stained woods set a tone of China in the Q'in dynasty, warmed by burnt-red detail, tatami matting, and carefully positioned lighting. Feng-shui has governed the decor, with a welcome absence of Chinese Souvenir-Shop Tat. The welcome is warm and genuine, with friendly staff on hand in the foyer to help with coats, ask what kind of table you'd like, and immediately establish the feeling that these guys know what they are doing. You could bring a biz client here in complete confidence. My dining guest for the day was my old friend Lia Matveevna - Senior Professor at the Moscow Academy of Tourism and Hotel Management, and a lady to whom you wouldn't want to serve coffee in a tea-cup. Tao quickly passed her first test - "Neil - good toilet-paper. You can always spot cheapskate corner-cutters in this business by the toilet-paper they've supplied".
The menu, for the moment, is not phenomenally wide. But remember that those cheap places that seem to serve a bazillion dishes do so by slapping one of three ready-made sauces on all the dishes - whereas everything here is cooked fresh to order. If your time and budget are limited, there's a delicious "salad-bar" (in fact it's a buffet, featuring several hot dishes too) for only 270Rb (one visit only), presented with flair and sophistication. However, the a la carte dishes emerged at dazzling speed - Chinese food spoils quickly if it sits, as you'll know if you've ever tried to reheat last night's take-away leftovers. Tao serves Beijing cuisine, with a native Beijingi chef head-hunted purposely for the job. The range of dishes is somewhat different from Guangzhou cooking (which is heavily reliant on seafood and fried foods) - landlocked northern Beijing is not so very far from Siberia, and meaty dishes prevail. A true Beijing meal is not divided into different courses - everything comes out of the kitchen as-and-when ready, and goes onto the rotating tray from which everyone helps themselves. Tao have stuck to the more European formula of having appetisers and main courses - although you can ask them to bring it all Beijing-style if you'd prefer? Even so, you'll want to share the dishes and try a bit of everything - which is what we did.
We shared three appetiser courses recommended by the suave and helpful maitre d, and all were delicious. Nor were we steered into the pricey stuff, I ought to add - although it is certainly there if you want it. Cucumbers in Sweet-Sour Sauce (220Rb) are not what you think they're going to be. This is a refreshing cold dish of chill-crunchy cucumbers, Chinese spices and a light dressing that's certainly sweet-sour - but it isn't the orange-coloured boiling brew usually found smothering Guangzhou cooking. I've hated cucumbers since I was a small child and found inventive ways to dispose of them uneaten, but this all seemed to disappear only too quickly. If it had taken some persuasion to make me order cucumbers, it was Lia's turn to pull faces when the restaurant suggested marinated mushrooms. How on earth could this dull Russian pantry standby and vodka-chaser be worth ordering when eating out? Easily, as it turned-out. Marinated Golden Mushrooms (200Rb) are delicate, munchable straw mushrooms, served with a light dressing with straw-cut strips of other mushrooms to complement. The stars of starters, however, were the aubergines. The title "Fried Aubergines" (250Rb) doesn't really do them justice - they're lightly stir-fried cubes of aubergine (aka eggplant) without a hint of greasiness, served in a dark sweetened barbeque sauce. The order for a second portion of these was quickly being taken-down.
As authentically in Chinese food, the portion-sizes are intended for sharing, and not as an individual serving. We decided to share a main course, and took the Steamed Sea Bass, which comes in at 600Rb - pretty much the average for the meat and fish entrees. The whole fish is brought to the table, and the sharing process is all part of the conviviality of Chinese eating. For anyone not on post-Christmas diets, there's a huge range of meat and chicken dishes, many of which are prepared on sizzle-dishes at your table. The bass was succulent and delicate, and presented beautifully. Alongside it the Chinese Noodles with Seafood (400Rb) had a welcome range of different textures.
Being a Russian woman, Lia always prefers red wine, whereas being a Brit I cling to some comfort-blanket about "white with fish" that's entirely unknown in China. Anyhow, given our differing tastes we ordered House Wine by the glass - 250Rb, but worth the price. Helped along by three pots of green tea, Perrier and two robust espressos, we paid 2408Rb after a "before 5pm" discount of 602Rb had first been subtracted.
The comparative shortness of the menu - which is currently being expanded - is really the only downside to this slick, elegant and well-managed operation. Although covered with snow currently, the veranda outside promises outdoor summer eating too. The same management and owners have two other restaurants within the same huge premises, serving Italian and Russian food.
27.01.04.
