Can a fantasy-driven, ear-splitting, 400-seat Asian jumbo boasting 146 different menu items and calling itself the "next iteration" of celeb-magnet Tao put you out like a light? You betcha Quan Yin it can.
Quan Yin is the Buddhist goddess with 24 arms (count 'em, 24) presiding over Tao Downtown's block-long dining room. It's actually an iteration of 1999, but lacks that famously party-friendly year's spirit of abandon. It's hard to stay awake through an Asian-esque menu worked to death at 1,001 other places, washed down by fruity cocktails we thought "Sex and the City" sucked dry in 2004.
Peking duck for two is the sole standout with velvet meat.Photo: Brian Zak
Cyclopean Tao Downtown, beneath the Maritime Hotel, is nearly twice as large as the mammoth, East 58th Street original Tao, one of the nation's highest-grossing restaurants. As sexless and exhausted as the first one was novel, it at least uproots prevailing wisdom about what New Yorkers actually eat. Tao Downtown could swallow in one gulp all of Brooklyn's critical-darling, blogs-beloved, no-reservations joints and still have 100 seats to spare.
Las Vegas-style, faux-Oriental splendor was a blast 15 years ago, when Ruby Foo's first unleashed it on the town. Now, David Rockwell's plastic-looking Buddhas, generic lattice-work screen walls and Chinese calligraphy might be ordered out of an Ikea catalog of Far East clichés.
Privileged mezzanine seating nooks descend in a procession of giant steps like a Philippines rice paddy to the main dining floor — a sea of big, round tables like those at rubber-chicken functions. Numerous mature faces look too grown-up for the shtick; few 20-somethings can afford small plates up to $20 and entrees in the high $30s.
Except for "sommeliers" who haven't tasted what they're selling, the floor staffers are well-drilled and sport a healthy sense of humor. What might inside-out soup dumplings be? "Usually the soup is in the dumpling, here it's outside the dumpling." Precisely: Nondescript short-rib dumplings float in nondescript broth.
The something-for-everybody pan-Asian menu poses no threat to enchanting, narrow-niche spots like Mission Chinese, Pok Pok, Jeepney, Khe-Yo and Pig & Khao — nor even to established competing mass-market jumbos like Buddakan.
Tao Downtown's dim sum and small plates by the score register as a soy, ginger and sugar onslaught. Think lumpy, steamed chicken gyoza, bony barbecued ribs in a sweet, syrupy substance and disturbingly mushy tuna atop tiny crispy rice cakes. The latter were $17 for six morsels, or $2.83 per bite.
A pair of yakitori lamb chops ($18) in their entirety would not fill a cavity, and the only part of "sizzling soy chicken" that sizzled was the bowl, which the waiter advised us not to touch.
Much better entrees — like unoriginal, but smartly seasoned black bass and black cod — save the place from total-snore status, but come too late. Peking duck for two ($76) was among the best I've ever had. Chef/partner Ralph Scamardella has this bird's number — the meat seductively velvet after labor-intensive spicing, hanging and roasting.
Desserts like "grasshopper" layer cake, involving mint cream and cracker-like "Tokyo cookie cakes," keep your eyes open, too, but not very wide and not for long. Wake me when it's 1999.
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