Tabu - Chicago

The waiter's hygiene was subpar. While he was pleasant, he had an unpleasant smell. The food and drinks were mediocre. I likely won't return.

Now, moving on to our food ordering experience. With two separate tables, we ended up with two different waiters. However, even having two waiters resulted in delayed orders, duplicate dishes, and some items simply not arriving at all. I understand it was a busy Saturday, but things kept going wrong. One of my guests waited an entire hour for their meal only to be told that the kitchen had run out of meat. There seemed to be a significant communication breakdown between the kitchen and the staff. I will say that one of the managers was very apologetic and tried to make amends by offering a discount and a complimentary drink. A discount sounded nice, right? Well, not quite… By the end of our reservation, we were all just eager to leave. To expedite things, we decided to split the bill evenly. The following morning, as I reviewed the bill, I realized we had been double charged for several drinks. It’s unclear how the two waiter/two table system was supposed to work, but it clearly fell short. Additionally, for the menu items that were mistakenly brought out twice (due to server error), we were told those would be removed from our bill, but they weren’t. So, even though we received a discount due to the chaos, we actually ended up paying more. I think from now on, I’ll stick to visiting Tabu with just one other person, and definitely not with a large group.

The churros were absolutely delicious. I highly recommend trying them!

The ambiance is one of the best of any restaurant. The music selection was lively and the restaurant fun to look at in any direction. The staff was busy as it was a Saturday night during restaurant week yet our server was still attentive throughout the course of the meal. The tasting menu specifically for restaurant week was classic Latin fare in most regards with a few creative twists scattered throughout.

I was underwhelmed by the food but I did enjoy the ambiance and aesthetics. Went for restaurant week and got the duck marmalade without the cream because of my dairy allergy. They were out of desserts so I just received some fruit and I asked for sweet plantains. The food was just okay. We got the chips with guacamole and salsa. My friend got the avocado toast and she got the churro bites. Our waiter was very nice. The host was not so friendly.