Taste — Restaurant in Cleveland Heights

We were excited to try Taste for the first time last night. Unfortunately, we ended up leaving after more than 90 minutes without having eaten.

I made 6:45 pm reservations. The restaurant was very busy and we were very surprised to see that social distancing was not being practiced at all. Since my husband and I are fully vaccinated we weren't too concerned. The server came over shortly after we were seated and we ordered wine (she made a great recommendation). When she returned with our wine we ordered dinner...arancini appetizer to share, gnocchi for my husband and halibut for me. It was just before 7 pm when we ordered. At about 7:30 our entrees arrived. We told the server (not our original server) that we never received our appetizer. She took the entrees away and brought the appetizer a few minutes later. It was clear that the appetizer had been sitting in the kitchen for a while. We were starving by this point so the two small arancini were gone in 60 seconds.

This is where our meal completely fell off the rails. We ordered a second glass of wine anticipating our entrees would arrive shortly. At 7:50 we still had no food. Fearing that the kitchen never re-fired our entrees after the earlier debacle, I asked our server to check on our meal. She said it would be out soon and she was watching for it. By 8:15 we still had no food and no update from our server. My husband went to the bar to ask for the manager. After a few minutes of waiting, my husband was told that the manager was too busy and would not come out to speak with him. WHAT?! My husband told the hostess that we were leaving after waiting over 90 minutes for our food and that we had no intention of paying for the wine we had had thus far. She said she understood and we left.

Moral to the story, when your entree arrives before the appetizer, just accept it...do not send it away because you may...

The service I received was great from the bartender . However I ordered the Arancini appetizer and it was overcook on the outside. I have patronized this restaurant for many years even during the pandemic and ordered this dish multiple times and it came out overcooked. What I perceived as a simple fix was anything but . The manager / owner informed me that the chef refused to remake my order because he has worked there for 6 years. I believed they made an assumption that I am a your woman who wasn’t cultured and did not understand that I am a young woman who had traveled the world ordered this dish multiple times out of the country and even at their own establishment. The manager was rude and disrespectful . He insisted the dish was made correct but toward the end of the conversation informed me that they just purchased a new fryer last week which could need adjustment after telling me I could patron somewhere else . This was literally my favorite restaurant in Cleveland but I now will find a new establishment. Despite how I was treated I tipped my bartender $10 on a $6 bill because I only got my drink and she was and absolute sweetheart who repeatedly apologized for how I was treated by the manager and cook . They just lost a...

In Cleveland (from San Diego) to visit a friend. She'd good things about Taste, but never been and she wanted to try. The restaurant is not pretentious or overly fancy, the staff is extremely nice and the food was REALLY good (it helps that we'd just landed and had airport food all day long). I had the duck (ordered medium, was perfectly cooked, served over green beans and potato puree), which was fantastic, my wife had the halibut (which she loved as well), and our friend had the crab stuffed salmon, which she "couldn't stop eating" (quoting her). We ordered calamari (crispy, not chewy) and mussels (very flavorful) and a salad as appetizers. For dessert we had the crême brulee (really good), the chocolate cake (served warm, very rich but not overly so, almost perfect),and the house sorbet (mango and blood orange - my wife comments that she liked the flavor of the blood orange, but the texture of the mango was better). We all had wine by the glass (I had the only cabernet on the menu, easy to drink, on the sweeter end of the spectrum, not dry). As a visitor, I highly recommend this restaurant, which was a very pleasant surprise as our first stop in Cleveland. TLDR: Visit this restaurant, you won't be...