Last week, I was down in Palm Beach and while there I had dinner at the island’s longtime dining institution, Ta-boo. The restaurant’s location on Worth Avenue ensures great people-watching will occur during lunch, but come dinnertime, it seems that only habit and tourist guide books are they only things keeping people coming through the door.
I’ve been eating at Ta-boo for as long as I can remember, but in recent years, I’ve gone instead to The Palm Beach Grill, Michael R. McCarty’s-a restaurant I love so much that I think I want them to cater my shiva simply because I want to be near the fried green tomatoes and macaroni & cheese one last time-Būccan, or any of the other incredible restaurants on the island. It wasn’t that I had a bad meal the last time I ate there; I just stopped considering it when making my dining selections these past few years. However, Grace was in town and it’s always been her favorite place to eat on the island so I called and got us reservations.
When one calls the restaurant’s phone number to make a reservation, a voice recording tells you that “It’s been said that if you were not seen at Ta-boo, you were not seen in town.” Well, that would be true if the other patrons could still see, let alone breathe. The average age of the non-tourists sent from the Breakers had to have been 79. There they sat, facelifts, tummy tucks, breast-lifts, botox-injections, hip replacements, cataracts and all in their St. John knits and Maus & Hoffman finery looking like they had all decided to take a night off from being dead to go to dinner.
Let’s start with the wine. For a restaurant that charges an average of $30 for an entrée, the wine by the glass list is akin to something one might find at a upscale chain restaurant with such excellent options as Santa Margherita pinot grigio and other sub-quality, yet overpriced wines that are all so equally bad that it’s just better to stick with water.
And so with the soothing sounds of Big Willie’s “Just the Two of Us” playing overhead at a volume louder than mood music should be played, we ordered.
It’s not easy to mess up a salad so I will say that the pear and walnut salad is fine. Years ago, though, Grace and I went wild and got a baked brie, which was scrumptious. Unfortunately, I didn’t see it on the menu this time around so perhaps they don’t offer it anymore; that, or it was a special for that evening.
As for the main courses, they were just okay. Grace, who wasn’t very hungry, only had the classic pizza, which I could have done a better job making myself. In fact, I have made a better pizza than theirs. It was far too greasy and looked as though it was in the oven for too long. My thinner Kim Jung-Un ordered that evening’s grilled salmon special, which he said way too dry to enjoy. Mother and I both ordered the dover sole and while the sides that come with the sole were fine as always, the sole itself was awful! It was so bad that it tasted three times better cold the next morning when I ate mother’s leftovers for breakfast! And that was AFTER I spritzed a whole lemon over it! It had no flavor at all. For a piece of fish that costs nearly $40, one would assume it would taste perfect.
Dessert didn’t do a whole lot to impress us either. Of the pathetic options available, I settled on the ice cream sunday because I thought “how can you mess this up?” Turns out, you can. The vanilla ice cream wasn’t very good and kind of tasted like Edy’s, which only tastes half decent when they serve it at 35,000 ft. for dessert on United, and that’s after you get chocolate sauce, carmel sauce, whipped cream, walnuts, and the cherry on top.
The problem is that Ta-boo sold out. The ultimate sign of this is when they sell brand hats and golf shirts on their website, which Ta-boo does. It can happen to any once incredible restaurant; in Williamsburg, the Trellis used to be this extremely elegant restaurant where you made sure you looked nice when you ate there. I remember eating there for brunch one morning back in the beginning of Clinton’s first term and everyone had on suits and pearls with scarves. The space was beautiful and the food was critically-aclaimed for years, especially the dessert, which was thanks in large part to the restaurant’s co-owner and former pastry chef, Marcel Desaulniers, whose desserts were so critically acclaimed that he wrote a 1992 book, Death By Chocolate.
But then this amazing new restaurant called the Fat Canary opened up across the street in 2003 and the food was delicious, the staff was so friendly and courteous, the wine list was extensive, and it was a threat. So, to try and stay relevant, the Trellis tried to reinvent itself. The problem was that their plan backfired. Except for the height of summer when tourists will eat anything and anywhere, it’s easier to get into the Trellis than it is to get into North Korea! Grace and I went there because the Fat Canary was full back in the summer of 2008 and it was AWFUL! I’m still haunted by that meal it was so bad.
Ta-boo used to be a great restaurant and maybe it can be again, but right now it’s downright horrible. The kitschy decor is showing its age, the fish tank at the bar looks like something out of an episode of “Cribs,” the menu is in desperate need of being pared-down and updated. Even then, it will still have a a problem dragging people away from newer, more exciting restaurants that have swept in and captured the market once dominated by Ta-boo. Such legendary mainstays like Chez Jean-Pierre and Café L’Europe have managed to endure because they’re the Palm Beach equivalents of Le Cirque; they’re timeless and not going anywhere anytime soon because they’re special restaurants for special occasions.
If Ta-boo wants to matter again, it needs to fix itself and fast because its core patrons are dropping like flies and their children and grandchildren are quickly moving on to better restaurants that have better food and patrons who don’t belong in wax museums that have been decorated to look a bad 1980s relic.
The Yapper 