Thyme — Restaurant in Palo Alto

I almost never write reviews. In fact, this is my very fist one. This time, I felt compelled to do so, because I see good potentials in this restaurant, yet, I also see several critical areas of improvements. My wife and I ate there yesterday, for a special evening without kids dinners. We wanted to make it somewhat special, so trying the new Thyme restaurant in Palo Alto seemed like the perfect plan. On the positive side, the food overall was good, not incredibly amazing, but really good. The corn soup was delicious, and so was the rack of lamb. My wife had the prawns that were good as well. On the negative side, the prawn dish came with 2 prawns cut in half and a huge salad covering the rest of the plate. We are not the cheap kind, but for over $22, we expected more than 2 prawns. The service was disappointing. The single lady in charge of waiting the entire restaurant looked confused at times (starting with finding the table associated to your reservation) to plain absent minded at other times (coming twice to take order). It took for ever to get her attention, and the entire round trip to get the bill and pay for it took for ever. I eventually had to walk over to the counter (twice) to grab her attention. Overall, she looked overwhelmed and could not really manage. On occasions, we exchanged looks with customers at other tables, just to make sure that we were not the only ones feeling this way. On the more mundane side, the final bill on a cheap hand-written piece of paper did not really match the somewhat high standing level that the restaurant...

I’ll start off this review by saying- this is precisely how I found this secret gem, I scoured for hours for best online reviews and yes, I actually do read them. So with that, I implore you to have the patience to do the same, or in the very least take a chance on this place, and I guarantee you, you won’t regret it! The staff are so kind and helpful, not pretentious as predicted when you look at the menu and location of a boutique restaurant. I will admit where I went wrong that evening was the rookie mistake of indulging in the fresh warm bread, I should have saved my stomach for the several courses that were yet to come. We turned the two hour evening into a four hour evening and no one rushed us! I recommend EVERYTHING WE ORDERED: the roasted beet and asparagus salad Avocado and grapefruit micro green salad Risotto with mushrooms and parm Pan seared salmon salmon with potato and picked papaya and leek relish (so creative and delish), but I looked at the steak as well as the vegetarian dish and I knew there was no wrong choice, but yet I wanted to try them all. In this instance, I knew I’d need to come back with my girlfriends, just so we could eat off each other's plates and I could try even more. I’m a dessert fein as picky as they come and they nailed the warm apple tart with custard! We also tried the orange and olive oil cake YUM!!!

Well, the secret is officially out, and it’s about Thyme people found this gem like we did! (Yup, couldn’t resist). Such a great name, why not?! Enjoy- and tell them Natalie sent you!! YOU...

This was a restaurant we found on yelp because we were in the area. Never heard of it. Small cozy place with excellent food. Chef Winston was really nice to come out and ask us how everything was. Small menu but something for everyone sort of menu. We sampled many different apps and entress (4 of us). Succulant lamb, great crab cakes, very fresh salmon and prawns as well. Sauces, flavors all around outstanding. My beet salad was sooo good. Perfect amount of dressing. Beautiful presentation. Prices match the high quality and fresh ingredients. Very good service, unobtrusive yet server seemed to be aware the moment we needed something. Also quite casual which we like. We are there for the food and not the hoity- toity behavior. So we could relax (especially after a long work week). I recommend...