Cheap Eats - Paradise lost at Tahitian Noni

Atlantic Station’s South Seas schtick

I’d never heard of the exotic and little-known fruit called noni before my first visit to the Tahitian Noni Cafe. I must not be the only one, since the restaurant provides laminated flipbooks on every table to explain the versatile fruit. According to the informative little guide, ancient Tahitians used the noni for just about everything. They steeped the leaves to make tea, and they used the juice to whip up healing elixirs. Frankly, I still don’t know what noni tastes like, though it shows up in many items on the menu here.

Hey, Noni Noni: The menu mostly consists of vaguely tropical-sounding appetizers and sandwiches. A crab cake starter ($5.95), golden-crisp and scattered with a handful of briny capers, marked the high point. A warm turkey and provolone sandwich ($8.95) was hard to manage on a flabby croissant, but slices of Granny Smith apple gave it a bit of zing. A turkey avocado BLT ($8.95) lost half its insides every time I went to take a bite.

Bird-brained: The Polynesian chicken pita ($6.95) was a study in blandness — slices of rubbery chicken wedged into a pita pocket with lettuce and shards of red pepper. A noxiously sweet peanut sauce comes alongside. I guess that’s what makes it “Polynesian.” A cup of chicken noodle soup tasted of nothing but salt, its mushy noodles disintegrating into the gelatinous broth.

Pie on my face: The sandwiches, though uninspiring, positively glowed in comparison to the pizza I sampled. If you’ve ever tried one of those low-cal microwavable frozen pizzas, then you have an idea of what’s going on here. I ordered the Polynesian pizza ($8.95), topped with shrimp, ham, macadamia nuts and pineapple. I regretted the choice the minute the server plunked it down in front of me. It couldn’t have spent more than a few minutes in an oven: The crust was doughy and the tiny shrimp were still pale gray. I managed a few bites. It tasted as dreadful as it looked.

South Seas schtick: After three visits, I can’t find much to recommend at Tahitian Noni Cafe. The space is attractive enough — faux bamboo tables, rattan pendant lights, wood floors stained a warm reddish-gold — but it’s sterile in a way that tells me every detail of the decor was dictated by a manual back at home office.

The dining options at Atlantic Station are still pretty limited, and I imagine that’s helped keep traffic flowing at Tahitian Noni. It was reasonably busy every time I visited, even at 3 p.m. on a Sunday. But they better reconfigure the menu, pronto, or they’re going to find their business sailing off into the sunset.