East meets Westmount

Tao offers a tantalizing Asian taste test

by SPANKY HOROWITZ

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"

"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"

"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.

(Excerpt from Benjamin Hoff's The Tao of Pooh.)

My own philosophy is similar to that of good ol' hunny-eatin' Winnie the Pooh. The exciting things in my day tend to revolve around what type of raw-milk cheese I will be inhaling in the afternoon and then what kind of dumplings I will have later in the evening. My dumpling experiences usually take place in Chinatown, but every now and then I wander off the beaten path to another beaten path, in this case: Tao of Westmount.

Tao is an all-round Asian restaurant, serving food that is Szechuan, Cantonese and Thai, with a few other oriental odds and ends. Their strengths lie in the Szechuan arena, and they are now in the midst of a Spring 2001 rice/noodle festival. The last page of the menu lists the festival specials, all priced at $5.95! You can choose from 12 different dishes that are all superbly prepared and a great value because the rest of the menu is priced at nearly double that of these festival specials.

Nursing my own pathetic and deadly version of the flu that is going around town, I sampled two soups--a hot and sour soup for $3 and a crab and asparagus soup for $4. The hot and sour was delicious, thick and slightly spicy - and loaded with shitake mushrooms, sprouts and cubes of firm tofu. The crab soup was bland, too eggy and did not use real crab-which turned me into a real crab. I should have stuck to my mom's matzo-ball soup.

Any items that are considered spicy are duly marked with a star in the menu, but be aware that the definition of "spicy" is taken from the Westmount dictionary, and there are no indications of levels of heat, just spicy or not spicy. Example: The hot and sour soup was not spicy, but the Shanghai noodles were, but both were marked with a star.

Ordered from the festival page, the stir-fried shrimp with wheat noodles "Shanghai style" was sublimely hot, with a lingering heat that grew more intense after you swallowed. Thinking that the dish would be small because of its small price tag, I ended up taking much of it home, and enjoyed the soft noodles, bean sprouts, onions and springy shrimps just as much the day after.

The dim sum platter from the lunch menu was a delight from A to Y. For $9, you get your choice of three soups or dumplings, a spring roll, rice, your main course and dessert, which was the unfortunate Z--an almond cookie. The dumplings were served in a bamboo steamer, a touch of authenticity that did not go unappreciated. There were four kinds of dumplings: two pork, two chicken, two bean/veggie and two shrimp. They were all good, except the shrimp, which were even better--so much better that I ordered them as an appetizer on my next visit.

The chicken dishes are mostly priced at $10, and so I tried the crispy spinach chicken with peanut sauce. The peanut sauce is made from peanuts, not peanut butter, and tastes extra-good due to the lack of excess oil used in most peanut sauces. The crispy spinach is served separately so you can taste its sugary candy goodness before mixing it into the creamy peanut sauce.

For dessert, fried bananas with cinnamon sugar. Mmmmmm.

Tao

Address: 374 Victoria Ave.

Phone: 369-1122

Hours: Mon-Fri 11am-10pm; Sat 12pm-11pm; Sun 12pm-10pm

Best features: beautiful high ceilings, high-quality food

Vegetarian friendly: yes

Wheelchair access: yes

Alcohol: yes

Price: $6-30 per person, before drinks, tax and tip

Rating: HHH out of HHHH