I don’t remember if I returned the question, or if or what they answered. ‘ Totally knew from your outfit!’ they say. Am I still vegetarian if I don't digest meat? I be social with my immediate tablemates for a bit. Which, I mean, understandable, given half of it will be purged later anyways. Usually at comped promoter dinners, dishes were served family-style and without regard to anyone’s preferences, and the kitchen often sent out the cheaper food, or what hadn’t been ordered much that evening. Just a plate, of pieces of meat, put on display, passed around a table, of pieces of meat, put on di- no cheap analogies I stop myself and heap a few portions onto my plate, eliciting another M comment: ‘ I would have never guessed you ate meat.’ Starting to like this guy. M thrusts a plate of grilled chicken my way. And everything is already priced into those markups. We’ll all tango through these tripwires for fear of collapsing the superimposition into any one legibility which may paint us in a bad light. Strings are attached to everything, and everyone wants to feel like they’re the ones pulling them. My beauty is priceless, so I will go uncompensated for it. The rich spend, the wealthy spend nothing. The night is to be rife with such ambivalence, I’m told. Girls and promoters dance around this silence: By accepting the invitation to dinner, she is in a social debt to the promoter, but what, exactly, is expected of her? In exchange for dinner, girls are implicitly expected to spend time at the club with a promoter…The uncertainty over exactly how or when repayment happens can make a gift more burdensome than a clearly delineated market transaction. Treating girls is the basis of the VIP economy. The one-two punch is by design, the book warns me: Tonight, it’s Baby Brasa, followed by TAO Downtown. Or maybe the bartender handles it while he’s shaking the drink. Though I’d hate to be the busboy stuck spending his afternoons blowing these up. ‘ Hey, can we pull up a table for her?’ The flamingo’s cute. I awkwardly satellite at an adjacent empty table for a few minutes, until another waiter M can bark at comes into range. A friend called just as I was crossing Seventh Avenue, there was a bomb threat a the NYU dorms. Great drinks, incredible ambiance, delicious food, and helpful service TAO is well deserving of all its hype and I will absolutely be back soon.‘Perfect timing,’ one of our promoters, M, greets me as I arrive an hour later than was asked. Being gluten free at TAO isn’t easy, but if you tell your server that you have an allergy or intolerance, they are more than accommodating. Yes this is unfortunate, but I was incredibly impressed by my server’s knowledge of gluten free menu items and the preparation of each dish, and I was also pleased to see how he went out of his way to double check with the kitchen that everything I ordered was conducive to my diet!Įach time I go to Tao Downtown, I have an amazing experience. My waiter informed me that several dishes on the menu, for example the famous Chilean sea bass skewers, are marinated for 24 hours in miso or other gluten-filled sauces, and cannot be made gluten free. Although these are the only designated gluten free items on the menu, there are plenty of entrees you can make gluten free when you order them with no sauce! For example, my friend and I also indulged in the hamachi crudo no sauce, duck fried rice, octopus salad, and branzino! Sashimi platters are also gluten free, although they are not listed on the menu, and these platters are even MORE delicious when you ask for gluten free tamari soy sauce. Thankfully for us in the NOBREAD crowd, TAO recently updated their menu and an asterisk ‘*’ is used to indicate gluten free items! I love this new feature however, only seven, yes SEVEN, menu items are accompanied by this asterisk. So what can you have? 100% GF orders include the edamame, pad thai noodles with chicken, shrimp, or lobster, jasmine white rice, miso soup, halibut, and wok-fried potatoes. TAO’s menu is huge, and with so many options it can be difficult for both the gluten-free person and gluten-full person to decide what to order. Why? Naturally gluten free foods are drowned in soy, teriyaki and other nobread unfriendly sauces and sushi rice is malted with vinegar and other gluten culprits… I was incredibly excited, yet also nervous to go to TAO, as Asian food is difficult for a gluten free diet. Tables packed with celebrities, Wall Street types hosting client dinners, and girls celebrating “girl’s nights out” fill the space and Tao’s décor is an experience in itself. Since its opening in October 2013, TAO Downtown has been the talk of NYC.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |