The Dhaka Restaurant Scene has quite exploded over the years, and restaurants and cafes haven’t just become a place for good food and refreshing drinks, they’re also a place where you can just sit down and make some memories with your loved ones.

Tao Town is a Restaurant located in Dhanmondi’s KB Square, mainly specializing in Asian Fusion food. Being a big fan of Asian fusion cuisine, Tao Town has been a favorite of mine for a while. Everyone who knows me, knows how much I love their summer roll and sushis in general. They even gave me free sushi on my birthday, which was such a sweet gesture.

So you can imagine how happy it made me when Tao Town invited me to taste their new menu before it officially launched. They took our recommendations too, so as to improve their dishes any further before officially launching.

So their new menu, focuses more on those Asian flavors that most Bangladeshi tastebuds aren’t that familiar with, but with Tao Towns own little tweaks.

I can broadly break down the items we tried to 3 main categories: sushi, appetizers and mains.

Sushi

The new sushi flavors we got to sample were great, and reaffirms the love I have for their sushi. I loved their lava roll, and I believe it’s on par, if not better than my beloved summer roll.

The wild Forest roll, I really liked too, because of the soft cheese inside, and the cilantros covering the outer layer.

If you haven’t tried sushi yet, I recommend that you do, because Tao Town has some amazing sushi, and at a very accessible price point compared to other sushi places.

Appetizers

For appetizers we got the Somtam salad, prawn toast, bao burgers, and their Gigi lemon iced tea.

Somtam features some of traditional Thai flavors, and is a very refreshing and delicious Papaya and peanut salad, covered in a beautiful tangy dressing. I loved this, the crunchy thinly sliced papaya went very well with the bits of peanuts and the tangy garlicky dressing.

The prawn toast was crispy on the outside, soft and creamy on the inside, and tasted good.

The bao mini burgers, was Tao Towns take on a classic Bao sandwich, which is a kind of steamed bread, paired with a chicken patty and spicy sauce. I quite enjoyed it.

The Gigi iced lemon tea, was something quite new to me. It was made of turmeric, cinnamon, lemon and ginger. Now all those flavors sound weird together, but it somehow works really well together, and I thought it was a very refreshing and unique drink.

Mains

Now when it comes to the mains, I absolutely adored their fried fish in chilli paste, and the steamed fish in lime oil. Both of these I believe will be served as whole fishes. The fried fish in chilli paste, was very spicy and flavorful, while the steamed fish in lime oil was soft, and was covered in lots of classic Asian herbs, and I loved the tangy, garlicky aromatic flavors, and anyone who loves Asian food will definitely love it.

The black pepper crab was very good too, especially the flavors of the sauce and the meat, but when it came to eating the dish, I had some problems breaking apart the crab, but that’s probably more to to with my lack of experience breaking shells.

Now the others, weren’t that great. The black pepper beef was very tough, and pretty under seasoned. The squid dish was also very chewy, and the orange chicken didn’t taste like orange or chicken, it was a weird sweet food, with no seasoning , and didn’t have any of the flavors you’d expect from a classic like orange chicken.

For dessert, we tried their Nutella banana roti, which basically featured a porota stuffed with banana pieces and drizzled with Nutella. And it tasted pretty good, because you can’t really go wrong with Nutella.

Overall, it was a really nice experience, the staff at Tao Town was sweet and hospitable as always, and I am sure when the new menu launches it will be even better, because of the recommendations everyone gave them, and I can’t wait to go back and try them again.

Tashfia also does food blogging on Instagram. Follow her and send her lots of love!