Tas (Borough High Street)

I had always been fairly impressed with this restaurant. Clean, good service, good food and convenient.

A excellent venue for a working business lunch or catching up with old friends in the lunch hour without breaking the bank.

But today, service was decidedly slow and a bit surly. Lost a bit of their edge perhaps. Also lost the nice sofas at the front of the restaurant for more tables right against the window. Still good food and good value but losing its edge.
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David Gardner
Overall rating
Food 7 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 6 | Value for money 9
Wednesday, May 21, 2008

I once was a big fan of this chain, however concur with the negative review below the service & food at this branch is diabolical !

We has our starters thrusted in front of us randomly when enquiring as to which dish was which we were told "dont you what you ordered"

Main dishes arrived seconds later. All dishes were hurriedly prepared & bland !

Ordering wine was a feat in itself ...

When pointing out this dire called service to the manager the staf in question actually attempted to walk over 7 cahllenge my complaints..

Dinner was free but will never return !
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Mesh69
Overall rating
Food 1 | Service 0 | Atmosphere 4 | Value for money 1
Thursday, May 15, 2008

The Tas chain is very special. On many occasions I went there with my friends, girlfriend and family for special occasions. The restaurant has it right for everything. It's low lit, the service well above the menu prices and if you're hungry you can ask for more bread, sour cream dip and olives as you want.

About 2 years ago they started to offer bottled and not tap water as before you could get a jug of tap water for free. Having not been back for 12 months [due to living in Spain], I do not know if this has continued.

Their house wine isn't too bad, but I'd recommend getting a better quality wine. Also, I'd recommend getting a red - they have a not too bad merlot on the list.

The chefs specials are worth watching and it's one of the fewer restaurants that has a HUGE selection of vege dishes. There's at least 6 main dishes. I recommend trying the apple stuffed with rice and cream if you're a vegetarian.

I highly recommend BOOKING before you arrive. Mid week it's not too packed. On Thursday to Sunday its packed after 8.

Most nights there's a flamenco guitarist playing classical and other classical versions of popular songs. He does do requests as well. You can ask him to play a special song, very good for someone's birthday, but he won't mariarchi himself at your table.

For special surprises, the hotel will provide a cake [many times FOC] for a large group of people for a birthday. They will come and sing happy birthday and que the guitarist for melody!

The service is attentive and on the whole excellent. Sometimes reserving a table can be a bit hard over the phone with junior members of Staff. I think a previous review has noted this.

During the daytime, if you fancy a filling dish of starters, this place is ideal for a pica-pica. I used to go to their other restaurant for this.

The only downfall is natural light. Their flagship restaurant has a large window which is ideal for candle lit nights. This one has only spaces for 2/3 tables next to the window.

There again, it's borough high street and only really of interest to people watchers!

I always return there when i come back from Spain. That must tell you something....
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Anthony Squirrel
Overall rating
Food 8 | Service 9 | Atmosphere 7 | Value for money 9
Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Went there about two weeks ago, have visited the Waterloo branch before but I must say this was a memorable experience. The food was timely, in good portions but bland, atmosphere buzzy. Service was appalling. Three things happened, any one of which would depress me under normal circumstances for a mid range place such as this.

Firstly our mains turned up while our starters had not been cleared, we had hardly put our forks down before the waiters tried grappling with the dirty plates whilst simultaneously serving our mains.

Secondly, in the confusion I lost a fork which I asked to be replaced, the waiter (I watched him) first went to the cutlery station but had run out of clean forks, and then I saw him take a fork off an uncleared table and present it to me in his hand, he clearly could not be sure if someone had used it before as the table had just been vacated, add to this the poor presentation by hand.

Lastly, once I had finished my food, as I got to the end of my meal I discovered a plate with several dark brown cracks across the base had been used to serve my main dish. The chef must be working in the dark or clearly does not give two hoots about hygiene or presentation. This I pointed out and the embarassed manager took off the service charge and recompensed me with sickly banana liqueur shots. ho hum ..will never go there again.
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Maux
Overall rating
Food 3 | Service 0 | Atmosphere 4 | Value for money 3
Monday, May 12, 2008

Went there on a Wednesday night and it was packed, a good sign as it shows the popularity of this place. Great food, service was a little slow but the waiter didn't make any mistakes with the order. Food here actually has flavour, great if you want to get away from British blandness. The wooden floors make the restaurant quite noisy but that was my only complaint.
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Khaled
Overall rating
Food 8 | Service 7 | Atmosphere 5 | Value for money 6
Friday, August 18, 2006

Nice place, good food and plenty of it but they had a guy playing a guitar which was so deafening, we all ended up yelling over the table. It spoilt a nice evening. People want to chat with friends not be drowned out
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Alan
Overall rating
Food 8 | Service 8 | Atmosphere 4 | Value for money 7
Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Cheap and cheerful and fun with it - the night we were there there was a live guitarist.

Good meze and service with a smile.
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Kate - View all reviews by this user
Overall rating
Food 6 | Service 6 | Atmosphere 8 | Value for money 9
Monday, May 15, 2006

What can I say? I just love a good falafel and this place has them in abundance! I work next to London Bridge Station and it is therefore such a handy treat to visit Tas. When there's any work event that requires we feast, I always shout - Tas!
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Gareth Kingston
Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 10 | Value for money 10
Thursday, January 05, 2006

We had our Christmas meal here for work.

All the work xmas meal people were shoved in the basement and it was packed. The tables and chairs were far too close together that I just felt that we'd been packed in tightly to maximise their profits at the expense of our comfort.

The food was okay. The seletion of starters were far nicer than my main course of aubergines and vegetables.

Wasn't impressed at the mandatory service charge, but of course it meant that the waiters didn't have to make too much effort.

Wouldn't go back.
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Marianne
Overall rating
Food 4 | Service 4 | Atmosphere 4 | Value for money 4
Wednesday, December 21, 2005

we have often been to Taz with groups of friends and business contacts, we were very dissappointed with our experience this time, we had a party of 11 people. We could only order from a set menu this was not explained when we booked. The starters were really good but a couple of the main courses were very small and dry. The waiters were very rude when we ordered the desserts and coffees, My coffee was served to me, I had taken one sip before it was taken away and served to another table. Then the remaining coffees and drinks took a furhter 20 minutes to arrive after much prompting. We were sat right by the guitarist which was very loud being a large group of friends we wanted to chat but couldn't hear each other. Then the 12.5% service charge was added to the bill, this should have been optional but wasn't and we definately didn't get our money's worth!!! a very dissappointing meal, definately won't be going back and don't recommend it.
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Overall rating
Food 5 | Service 1 | Atmosphere 1 | Value for money 1
Wednesday, November 30, 2005