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Tay Do Cafe

Address:65 Kingsland Road, London E2 8AG
Tel:020 7729 7223
Price: £20.00
Opening Hours:Mon-Sun 11.30am-3pm 5-11pm (Fri-Sat -3.30pm -12M Sun -11.30pm)

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Tay Do Café is not about to win any design awards. The laminate floor, murky Wedgwood-blue walls & oversized lobsters peering down threateningly from the walls don’t make for the most gorgeous environment. Where this budget BYO joint (& Tay Do Restaurant just over the way at 60-64 Kingsland Road) succeeds is with its rather exciting menu. Vast repertoires can spell trouble, but stick to the distinctive Vietnamese dishes rather than the generic Chinese food & you’ll do fine. Char-grilled minced pork, with rice paper & salad for wrapping at the table, makes a tasty, fresh starter. Pho soups are good, with rare sliced steak, meatballs or perhaps chicken with an egg cracked in. Esoteric ingredients – goat, mussels, frogs’ legs – offer a change from the norm. Portions are vast, so eating ‘family-style’ comes strongly recommended.

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Reader reviews of Tay Do Cafe:

Alice S.
Reviews: 1

Alice S. ( 20s, Female )

I hate to leave negative reviews but in this instance I was so disgusted I can't say anything else. My fiance and I popped into Tay Do for a bite to eat one night. I wish we'd picked a different restaurant instead. It was the worst meal we have ever had. Or not had… He discovered two hairs in his dish after just a few mouthfuls of his food. This obviously put him off… if hygiene standards were so low that he found that in the first two mouthfuls who knows what else might be wrong! He sent his dish back, we both nibbled at mine for a while. We didn't even get through half of it. The staff were very blase about him sending the dish back and didn't even apologise. In fact they seemed disgruntled with us as though we were trouble causers! We asked four times for water only for it to come with the bill. The bill was charging us for the dish we sent back too! They took this off but refused to give us any other discount even though we hardly touched my meal because we put off. They said they had knocked off the cost of our tap waters out of courtesy then walked off and waited for us to leave. Well that's nice! They didn't charge us for warm water from a tap that came with the bill when we'd asked from the start of our meal. The food was horrible. The staff were rude, and the fact that they seemed to care so little about our meal makes me wonder how unhygienic their kitchens must be. Is it standard practice for hairs (and who knows what else may be lurking!) to appear in their meals I wonder. They pack people in too tightly too. They tried to sit us almost in the doorway before agreeing to let us have a table at the back. The place seemed ver popular but I'm sure this is because of the convenient BYO policy and nothing else. It wasn't even that cheap when you think about it… the bill came to a tenner for a bit of prawn toast and my one veggie soup with no drinks. I'm local to the area but I certainly won't be returning.There are far nicer, cleaner(!) restaurants down this road and in the surrounding area.

27 April 2009
Overall:1
Food and Drink:2
Service:1
Atmosphere:2
Value for Money:1
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