Toosso — Restaurant in Virginia

I heard a lot from friends and friends of friends about this place. Finally went there to dine.

Overall, no doubt that food is good and servings are of decent size. I have yet to finish tasting all on the menu but here is what I have experienced so far:

Note: Pakistani authentic or traditional food has to be spicy, oily and meaty so be prepared when you go to dine in a Pakistani restaurant and please avoid giving it bad rating because of these reasons.

Ambiance in general is kind of OK but its not impressive enough that one can proudly take his/her guests there. Having said that it is far better than most Pakistani Restaurants.

Customer Service: 50/50 but it would be nice to have Pakistani staff on counter and as servers so that they can meet the expectations of Pakistani Customers. The chemistry doesn't work well between Latino service staff and Pakistani Customers.

Green Chilies: Its a shame that like most Pakistani restaurants they don't offer real green chilies but Jalapenos instead.

Naan: Excellent but would be great if an order has two naans with it, one is served with order and other later. I ordered two naans they served both together. Both were warm but not freshly out of oven. By the time we hit second naan it was rock hard :)

Sorry to be rude here but when a restaurant claims to be authentic, it sets for itself very high expectations by its customers.

Halwa Puri - OK but hey, come on who serves folded dead puri and with raita. Puri must be bubbly and crispy. Increase chickpeas serving, start adding kalonji in bajhi and replace raita with desi pickles or pickled onions.

Nihari - tastes excellent but comes with very limited "Tari" and no real green chilies. No concept of addition of "mikh" or brain in it.

Haleem - nice but a little more spices can be used or be served with real green chilies.

Chicken Tikka - prefect but can be a little more spicy or sauce served with it can be spicier.

Biryani - too little serving. A combination of colorful rice and a piece of meat with hardly any flavor is not Biryani. Can be attractive for newbies.

Reshmi Kebob - I got liver flavor in it which really over powered the true flavor of a seekh kebob. Some customers might not even sense it or some may like it a lot but for me it was a disaster. Meat was overly finely minced. So the texture was also completely missing.

Chickpeas - An absolute disappointment. I have eaten these almost on daily basis for several years and regularly eating for last 30 years. I hardly remember any famous chickpeas seller in Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad that I may have missed. Making chickpeas is an art and I think Toosso does it only to have it on their menu card. In other words Toosso joins the club of those restaurants who make worst chickpeas.

Recommendations: Do not hold yourself from experiencing this nice food just because of my review. But do not set very high expectations.

For the Owner: Please introduce real green chilies (thai hot). Introduce serving fresh naans on the tables. Visit a Pakistani restaurant in Lahore or any other main city and observe how customers are taken care of until the last bite and even after. Respect your customers and they will take good care of you. If possible, introduce baby goat karahi both regular and namkeen.

Its unfortunate that there is not a single good karahi maker in Washington DC and its suburbs. Generally, because everyone uses low quality meat to...

Update: We have been to Toosso a few times and it used to be good in the start but their quality is degrading with time. I think because they are doing good business and owners are not taking interest in the quality and servie. We have ordered Toosso via Uber eats a few times and most of the times they have missed items and Uber is good to give a refund. But every time we thought they may have improved but we were wrong. In our last order last night they sent totally different items. By looking at the receipt we found they have sent someone else's order. We waited about 2 hours for the order to arrive and then it was wrong order. I called Toosso and the lady at the phone accepted that they have sent wrong order. She said she will talk to the manager and he will call me. Later she called herself and said she has talked to the manager but he is not available to call me and we accept we made a mistake but we can't do anything. This is bad. If it was my restaurant I would have sent the customer's order by someone in my staff on my own expense, but they refused to do anything. The manager didn't even bother to call me and talk to me. Just image you wait 2 hours for the food to arrive and find out it is wrong and then the restaurant says we can't do anything. I got the refund from Uber but our food was ruined and we had to order again from somewhere else. This is enough now and I am not going to or ordering from Toosso anymore. If the owner is reading these reviews, they need to improve their service. I have updated my rating from 3 stars to 1 star now. We ordered take-out from Toosso sometimes since a few years. Their quality is going down. Specially when you order take out, they miss items and when you asked them if they have checked everything while picking up the order, they say yes, but almost everytime something is missing. They need to check the order and make sure everything is packed before handing out the order to the customer, but they don't. This is really bad customer service. Their food is ok, some items are good and some not. But I really don't like that after driving home about 30-40 minutes drives you find out that order has missing items. This is the problem with a lot of Pakistani restaurants, no...

Food is good. A few dishes at least. The beef nihari is their best items and perhaps what most people come here to try. The half chicken roast is also good (not as good as the reviews will have you believe). The rest of the menu items are just average or below (like most of their rolls and naans). However that is not the reason I am giving this place a one star.

The service here sucks! That might have been acceptable when they first opened because you figure, they need time to get their act together. But the place has been around now for a long time. So long in fact that was used to be a Mom's style Paksitani restaurant with a cafe style, is not run mostly by hired help (only one Pakistani in the kitchen ... and he is not the one cooking). It took them a year to release that there should be a trash bin inside. If they are not going to clean the tables, give the guests an opportunity to throw away their own stuff.

The ordering process is slow... Painfully slow. Their is only one cash register and the person on it usually is handling takeout orders, new orders and processing checks for everyone. When you get your food, you should feel lucky if they didn't miss out anything. No brain capacity from the staff for any special instructions. They are barely keeping up with the 10 order menu.

The sad part is that, despite all that the Pakistani crowd that visits here mostly is oblivious to these issues. They accept this as "Pakistani customer service standard" . I wish more people would bring this to management attention. I want the restaurant to be around. We have limited choices of good Pakistan food around. But if their service doesn't improve, I don't know that I can recommend...