VASO Rooftop Lounge — Restaurant in Washington Township

very underwhelming experience. my best friend and i chose to celebrate our wedding anniversaries with our husbands here, based on the reviews about the view and food. my friend's husband arrived first and he was told he could not have a seat on the outside because it had been reserved for a "special event". no problem. however, the views from the inside are very lackluster, especially when a waiter started pulling the blinds down.

upon exiting the elevator, the very first thing my husband and i noticed when we walked in was the volume. (actually the music in the elevator is your first clue.) between the music, very loud conversations and laughter, and people watching football on the pull down screen, we had to shout to have a conversation and strain to hear each other, not the best ambience when you are trying to visit with friends you don't see very often.

when the waitress finally came around to take our order she only took the order for my husband and myself and did not even ask the other couple if they wanted anything. after she walked away we were kind of confused about what had happened, so i approached a hostess. this young lady proceeded to talk to the other hostess and ignored me until i said "excuse me" and tried to explain to her that we were not through ordering and needed our waitress to return. she merely said, "uh, ok." and apparently did not try to remedy the situation. it wasn't until my $24 cocktail arrived (yes, $24 for a double whiskey, but don't worry, there was no charge for the rocks) and we informed that server that we needed to see our server that she finally tracked her down. it was all "no worries, sorry for the confusion, hahaha"... maybe the servers have a hard time concentrating because it's too loud, also? idk.

anyway, we got our food, it was ok... nothing to write home about. definitely not as good as we were expecting for the price. i think our waitress checked on us once, which is fine. but when it came time for the checks, she had to ask us what our orders were, again. i used to be a waitress... this was mind boggling to me.

we still tipped well because we're not cheap jerks, but overall it was a disappointing way to celebrate, especially because when making the reservation there's a specific question that asks if you're celebrating anything special. why bother asking?

there is such a pretense of it being a classy place with no real follow-through or organization. maybe it's a great place for people to take selfies and post them on Instagram? i wouldn't know, i didn't...

The 2 stars in the review go to the rooftop bar coolness factor. I had heard great things about this place as a restaurant as well so for my birthday dinner I told my husband I would like to go there. Our plans got initially thwarted due to helping a client with an emergency for them and they were so grateful they sent me a $200 gift card. So we finally got to go. The menu is tapas style which I love. We tried several items and did not enjoy or finish any of them. We order the marinated olives and the Brazilian cheese bread to start. The olives were fine - served in oil and not pitted (which is pretty normal for tapas) but they were supposed to be marinated….I guess you can count the oil as a marinade. The bread a weird texture, very greasy/oily with shredded cheese on it. It would have been better if it would have had something to dip it in to give it a bit of flavor. I order the angry crab cakes, Which I assumed were supposed to be spicy. They were not. The first batch came out still frozen in the middle. We sent those back and then received really burned/over cooked crab cakes. I can only assume they are trying to figure out the cooking time on the frozen crab cakes. They didn’t have any flavor and to me were more like canned tuna cakes. I also ordered the Yukon potatoes, those were like the bagged cubed potatoes you can buy to make at home. My husband ordered the Falafel fried artichokes. The server said it was her favorite and reminded her of salt and vinegar chips. Sounded interesting. They were awful. I had one bite and it was nothing like she described. My husband had 2 and not another bite. He can normally eat anything so he really didn’t like them. We also ordered the street corn, which by the way, is actually soup to them. But we thought hopefully we could eat that. It was ok but it also didn’t match the description in the menu. It had a decent flavor and was creamy. The drinks were good and they brought some churros as a nice gesture. They were let good either. How do you mess a churro? Lol. Anyway, that brings me to paying. The gift card was $200. We spent $120. So I assumed they would leave the credit on the card for our next visit but they don’t. She said once she runs it if you don’t use it all you lose the remainder. So we decided to pay for the mother and her 2 little boys that were seated next to us. It took them almost an hour to figure out how to do it. 🤦‍♀️. So all in all I would say try this out for the cool rooftop bar experience but eat before you go. Enjoy your drinks...

I was hoping for a top-notch experience from this rooftop restaurant. They got the top part right with pretty good views (which varies by which part of the restaurant you sit at). You can get partial city views or reasonable landscape views. It's pretty clean and reasonably upscale. That's the best Vaso has - the views + ambiance.

The food was "just ok" for the price. For 3 people, we were at about $160 before tip. That includes 1 alcoholic beverage per person. The food wasn't bad, but I've had food at places 1/3 the cost that also "wasn't bad". I will say they do have a bit of extra flair that you won't get at the places 1/3 the cost, but flair is akin to having 50 candles in your birthday cake instead of a 5 and a 0, which is to say it's a bit fun and nice once in awhile, but not something you'd want to routinely pay extra for.

This brings us to the bottom of the list - service. Did our waiter show up? Yes. Was it once every 20-25 minutes? Yes. Did he show up way more frequently to adjacent tables? Yes.

I did figure out a trick at the end of the dinner, though: start talking about how he must've have fallen asleep behind the bar and BOOM he shows up within 30 seconds. Mention that you're pretty sure there's a 20-minute rule where if they cleared your table but never brought you the check you can get up and leave and (you guessed it) BOOM he shows up. Say that after waiting 10 minutes for him to take your card to cash you out means the meal is free and YES! BOOM again - he shows up. Gist of the secret? Start discussing at your table how the waiter won't get paid and he'll be there in under 45 seconds.

Would I go there again? Maybe if someone else was paying. Otherwise, there are other places that are worth the cost with the food...