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| - Reading over the reviews submitted so far for Toros, I am baffled. Most yelpers rave about the wonderful food; the few exceptions thought the food was fine but too pricey. I couldn't disagree more with either camp.
First, the food. I have a fairly strict standard for eating out: Trader Joe's frozen entrees. Huh wha?? Lemme 'splain ... a while back I discovered that Trader Joe's offers remarkably good frozen food - no, not as good as making everything from scratch with fresh ingredients, but orders of magnitude better than any other frozen cuisine. After sampling a few dishes, I decided that if a restaurant wasn't noticeably better than TJ's frozen, it's just not worth it. That's when I decided to never again eat at the likes of Friday's, Bennigan's, Outback, etc. Mind you, the restaurant doesn't have to be fancy. I'll eat at a hot dog stand, as long as it serves really good dogs.
Although Trader Joe's doesn't offer Spanish tapas, I'm pretty sure that if they did, they'd be a helluva lot better than the menu at Toros. Wow, what a morass of mediocrity. Started with the chicken in saffron sauce and the braised oxtail. The chicken had no flavor (just bland white meat chicken), and the saffron sauce just tasted like a generic cream sauce, straight out of some bottle. The braised oxtail meat was OK, but the sauce it was drowning in was off. If I kept the meat and vegetables out of the weird sauce, it was OK. Then I ordered bacon-wrapped dates, grilled asparagus, and seared salmon. The bacon-wrapped dates tasted awfully generic. I don't know what the difference is, but the b-w dates at Jaleo are a thousand times better. The grilled asparagus with aioli was the best dish of the night, although that's damning with faint praise. And the seared salmon with spinach and garlic sauce was nowhere nearly as good as whatever frozen salmon dish at Trader Joe's. I didn't realize it was a garlic sauce until I saw it on the menu just now because it tasted like flavorless white cream sauce (tasted the same as the supposedly saffron cream sauce - I'm guessing Toros's "saffron" is Yellow Dye #something). The salmon was overcooked, therefore a bit dry and lacking flavor. And the spinach was horribly salty. Finally, on to dessert. Apparently the Spanish version of rice pudding is rice pudding with cinnamon sprinkled on top. If you're craving rice pudding, buy it at Costco - Costco rice pudding is worlds better than the stuff at Toros.
The atmosphere left me somewhat annoyed. The server/bartender (I ate at the bar) was very nice but got a bit annoying because instead of asking me how things were, she kept asking, "Isn't everything just amazing? Isn't the food fantastic? Don't you just love it?" No, no, and HELL no. I ordered a glass of sangria, $6 for cheap red wine mixed with 7-Up and a lot of ice. Toros is also a "Nevada-style pub," which means they have video poker at the bar. For most of my meal, there was a group playing the machines, and they were quite raucous when celebrating every little win. I'm not criticizing them, but be prepared for that if you eat here.
The one thing I'm not criticizing at Toros is the prices. The menu prices are all very reasonable. I had a 50% off Groupon, but even at full price, my bill for the large quantity of food I ordered wouldn't have come to much. Also, they have happy-hour (forget the hours) when a lot of the items are half-price.
If you're idea of a great steakhouse is Outback or great Italian is Olive Garden, then you'll probably love Toros. Me? I'll save my money for Jaleo. If I had the opportunity to eat 52 meals at Toros for the same price as 1 meal at Jaleo, I'd savor the meal at Jaleo and enjoy my heated-up Trader Joe's the rest of the year.
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