Everything is wrong with Lotus of Siam NYC

Tonight a bunch of fellow Berserkers and I had the most disastrous dining experience most of us have ever experienced in a restaurant. The fact that it occurred in the highly anticipated and newly opened Lotus of Siam in NYC makes it all the harder to take. Admittedly, they’re still in a soft opening, but if you’re charging $75 a head for a set menu, you damn well better do at least a serviceable job. They didn’t come close.

Here’s the cold, hard breakdown:

Service: Abysmal. From the wait staff, to the sommelier to the manager. At first, it was overly attentive and a little stuffy and then non-existent for about 30-40 minutes. First off, we kept asking the waitstaff for tap water after the initial order of bottled water. Despite protestations, they kept refilling our glasses the minute we’d take a sip and kept opening up new bottles of bottled water. Finally, they made the switch to tap, but then mixed tap with bottled still and flat with sparkling. I got knocked in the head (did not receive an apology or excuse me) when they were reaching to clear plates. During another course, I had two different staffers reach for my plate at the same time and a slight tug of war ensued. Literally. Throughout the meal they just didn’t seem to comprehend what we were saying to them. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when after the soup course, they set new plates in front of us, then removed them and then ignored us for 30+ minutes as we waited for the first entree course to arrive. At that point we called over management and decided to leave.

Wine service and list: The list as is is meager and unimpressive. A few bottles we wanted to order were sold out. Yes, it should get better as there’s a bunch of wine in the cellar that’s not on the list yet. The sommelier was inattentive. The first bottle he served, and we only ordered Rieslings, was warm. How do you serve eight people warm Riesling? We’re not talking cellar temp. We’re talking mid-sixties or so. Also, there seemed to be a shortage of ice, as for some reason, despite spending plenty of time in ice buckets, two out of the three other wines we ordered were also warm. At one point the somm said he’d go down and see what was in the cellar that was not on the list. When he returned awhile later to see if we wanted another bottle of a wine we already ordered, we reminded him that he was going to check what was in the cellar for us. Well, he walked away and never returned for the rest of the evening. Additionally, we repeatedly had to tell the staff that we wanted another wine ahead of the Weinbach we ordered and finally gave up when it appeared they just didn’t understand us, or just didn’t care what we wanted.

Food: The food, what we got of it, was fine, but nothing to get excited over. With the exception of a large chicken appetizer, that on the menu said was a chicken satay, but was a large portion of what seemed to be a fried chicken balantine, the portions were small. So small, in fact, that we complained and asked for more of one of the appetizers. Now, this was a set menu for the soft opening and they will be going a la carte. This begs the question, why? Why would you do something that you can potential muck up and give a bad first impression to if that’s not what the restaurant is going to be about? Imo, if the portions we had received already were carried out for the entree plates we missed, then the $75 price tag is unjustified.

Management: Abysmal. When we complained about the experience we were having, the manager first got defensive and then tried to blame us for the problems. Absolutely incredible. When the check came, they had taken off the $250-$260 wine bill we had, but only $3 a head from the $75 set course dinner despite the fact that we only had the appetizers, hadn’t had the two entree courses or dessert and had been waiting way too long for our dinners and suffered excruciatingly poor service. We were all there and ordered by 7:10-7:15. At 8:45, we still hadn’t gotten to the entrees. What they did was not the right thing to do.

Misc: I didn’t see much of a change from the previous inception of Cru. The location is a poor one for this restaurant and I’m sure the lease is onerous. They would’ve been much better off just about anywhere else in the city. The prices they’re going to need to pay that rent is going to keep a lot of fans of the Vegas location away.

A really disappointing experience all around.

Brad

I can’t add much to Brad’s report. This was one of the worst dining experiences I’ve ever had. What a complete and utter shitshow (seems to be my favorite word of the night too).

Please note that we went into this knowing full well that it was one of their first full weeks open, that there’d be kinks to work out. We were ready to be generous. But they don’t have kinks: they have full-fledged chasms that call for a complete and utter revamp of the place. They almost went out of their way to piss us off, it was almost like they figured we were a lost cause and just bailed on us. Basically everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

They are in a VERY expensive location, with some very demanding customers, and if they don’t do something about their service and the culture of service there, they won’t last long.

I rarely feel like I’ve been ripped off, but I have to say that’s how I feel tonight. Wow.

Wow. That totally sucks. Sorry ya’ll had to endure such horrible service. Does anyone plan on contacting “the boss” location in Vegas about this experience? This sounds completely inexcusable … I probably would have walked out without paying if it was as bad as you guys are making it sound (and I trust that it was).

Glad you guys went first.

I am thinking it is probably cheaper to fly to Vegas for dinner there.

And you paid what they billed you?? With what you described, there is no way I’d pay that just because that is what they decided to bill me. $75 was the price for a full meal that they promised and failed to deliver. So $72 is way out of line for them to ask you to pay. I’d pay them something, but it would be well less than half of the full price.

I’m there tonight - not looking forward to it as much as I was. Will post tomorrow.

Knowing how dedicated the owners are I would be surprised that they don’t take immediate steps to make it right. And you can’t expect it to match the one in Vegas in that high rent district. I wish they would have replicated it and found a cheaper place to work in.

You simply cannot open a restaurant in NYC and not be on top of your game from the moment you open your door. There really is no such thing as a soft opening. I went last week and initially sat at the bar and then at a table in front. Overall I had a much better experience. I do not doubt your experience because I did see many service problems that I attributed to the soft opening. I would note that I thought the food was better than you did, the staff was extremely nice and they allowed two of us to order a few things instead of the whole menu. The Grand Cru Selection team is doing the wine list so it should improve.

I agree, I don’t understand the choice of location in NYC. It doesn’t make sense. And as Robert points out, you don’t open in NYC unless you’re close to 100%. As I said, we went in knowing full well they had just started and expected some kinks, but the attitude the manager had was dismissive and insulting. After he mentioned that the owners were present, we asked to talk to them, and he disappeared, never to reappear. In fact, I think it was a busboy who gave us our bill, our waiter also seemed to have evaporated.

The food was good, but I’d rather go to Sripriphai in Queens and pay 1/4 what we did last night. I’m still annoyed about the whole thing.

No DOH rating yet, either, apparently.
http://a816-restaurantinspection.nyc.gov/RestaurantInspection/SearchBrowse.do

Please tell me that you didn’t leave a tip.

Perhaps this was the most valuable tip.

Though all of us there never like to take things out on the waitstaff for bad dining experiences, they were a huge part of the problem and given the misery of the entire experience, we didn’t leave a tip.

we did not tip a penny

i look forward to your review ray, and hope it’s better than the one above. at least you’ll know where to find the men’s room being no stranger to the space

So weird that they’d refund the wine purchased but not the food portion.

Sounds like they never explained the thinking behind that?

How disappointing. They’ve got to right the ship. I have faith in Lotus that they will.

Tough to get answers when they disappear on you.

All we essentially got for our $72 was a small tuna appetizer, good, but the texture of the tuna was a little funny to me, literally three small spoonfuls of Nam Kao Tod, the crispy rice dish, very good, from what I could taste of it, 2 slightly bigger than a quarter bland fish cakes, a piece and a half of the chicken ballantine thing, which was mostly fried coating and a small bowl of soup, which was good, but I found salty, though no one else had a problem with the salt level.

Btw, there are no heat level indicators on the dishes. I hear the one in Las Vegas has a scale from 1-8 for each dish.

Vegas goes 1-10, and you can dictate it for each dish. They’ll sear your mouth if you like! Sorry to hear about the bad night. Unacceptable.

I thought they had staff and managemnet there being trained for weeks before. Did I recall this correctly or just misremembering?