Lotus Dim Sum

My addition to the existing thread seems to have vaporized it from the index, so I’m reposting it here.

Made it down to Lotus this afternoon after a bit of uncertainty. After reading about the mad Yelper’s inability to get answers, I messaged the restaurant as to whether they would be open today. They said they would be open, but given the distance I was traveling to get there, they suggested I call ahead to confirm that they were open. Except that every time I called my call went straight to voice mail. Since I was within about 10 miles of Santa Monica anyway, I decided to take the chance and they were indeed open. I ordered four dishes, but refusing to pay $11 for cheung fun since I never paid that much except for crab or lobster versions.

This is the chicken siu mai, not an especially common dish, but when offered has always been 100 percent chicken. What I got was a chicken and shrimp mixture, akin to the pork and shrimp mixture that is not uncommon at Chinese restaurants. But it’s particularly puzzling to see this combination in a Westside Chinese restaurant, since shrimp is not kosher. This dish was OK.

I’m a sucker for squid ink dim sum, and I had never seen steamed squid ink chicken bao before, so this was a must order. Another dish I rate as OK.

I’m also a sucker for piggy buns. Like most piggy buns, these were filled with bean paste. These were OK. (See a pattern here?)

Last dish was the edamame dumpling, full of soybeans and marinated bean curd strips. This something I never would have even dreamed about, and was by far the best of the bunch.

Not a very diverse crowd when I was there–not too many people looked like me. I certainly wouldn’t come back unless I was in the immediate area, and this dim sum wasn’t worth the $40 tab. Capital Seafood in Beverly Hills is a much better option for dim sum on the Westside.

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Huh?
Why on Earth would you expect a Westside dim sum specialist give a shite about a dish being Kosher? And even without the shrimp the chicken isn’t going to be Kosher!
Dim sum is about the least Kosher meal I can think of - anyone who keeps Kosher - on the Westside, Northside, Eastside or Southside, isn’t going to this place, so they can mix their shu mai with whatever non-Kosher stuff they want. Right @kevin ?

Agree - they usually do a pretty good (non-Kosher) job.

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Having worked 25 years of my career with a Jewish Westside firm, it’s an issue to some people.

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It is, but my friends who keep Kosher deal w/ it by just not ordering anything w/ meat when going to a non-Kosher/-Glatt place. Maybe it’s a generational thing.

Thanks for the report. I’ll still probably try it eventually, but it certainly doesn’t sound like it’s making a strong, good first impression on people…

If they say it’s chicken and it has shrimp in it, that could present a major problem for those with allergies. I’m pretty surprised by that.

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Hmm. So it only disappeared from my view?

I don’t know what view you have there. My screen shot was using Latest.

Why should restaurants have to adjust to allergies ?

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I think she’s just saying that the restaurant should say there’s shrimp in the chicken dumpling so those allergic to shrimp can avoid it.

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Please merge both threads into a newly created “Duplicate Dim Sum Threads… threat or menace”

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My view is the chronological index of posts on the Los Angeles board.

If you’re not seeing the “Coming soon” topic, no it’s not.

And maybe someone just doesn’t care for shrimp. I don’t say a restaurant has to give a full list of all ingredients.

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Anyone who is allergic to shrimp has probably learned to be wary when ordering at Chinese restaurants.

Definitely not there.

What browser are you using?

did you mute the topic?

Safari.

If you load the topic, scroll down to the bottom, and it’s set to Tracking or Watching, your browser is the issue. I’ve found Safari unusable on my Mac, I use Firefox and have Chrome installed as a backup.