Siam Lotus — Restaurant in Norwood

I left the Boston area several years ago for San Diego, but miss Siam Lotus. I try to make a trip down to Norwood for Siam Lotus when I'm in town, even when I'm staying in downtown Boston.

One of my favorite versions of Pad Kee Mao is labeled on Siam Lotus's menu as "Savory Noodles" ($9) and described as "fried flat rice noodles with ground chicken in hot and spicy holy basil sauce." I remember coming to love this delicious stir-fry dish 15 years ago when I was in my 20s and working long hours at a tech startup across the street. Pad Kee Mao is called "Drunken Noodles" at most other Thai restaurants in the United States, a poor translation of "Pad" (stir-fry) and "Kee Mao" (drunk person). No alcohol is added to Pad Kee Mao, despite its name. Folklore is that it got its name from its ability to jolt drunks back to sobriety due to its powerful spices. After trying numerous interpretations of Pad Kee Mao, Siam Lotus's remains my favorite.

If I don't order the Savory Noodles, I order the "Duck Choo Chee" ($19), featuring a generous amount of succulent roasted duck swimming in a decadent Choo Chee curry sauce with snow peas, baby corn, and other vegetables.

The "Beef Panang" ($14) is a traditional curry dish that I've been known to order from Siam Lotus, with slices of tender beef covered in a peanut-based Panang Curry sauce. It hits the spot if I'm in the mood for a sweeter Thai dish.

My favorite appetizer at Siam Lotus is the "Steamed Prince Edward Island Mussels" ($8.75) - particularly for the sweet, spicy sauce it is served with. Their "Siam Rolls" ($5.25) are good too, and guaranteed to please a crowd. (The turnip sauce they're served with is relatively weak, but you can order them like I do, with a crushed red pepper sauce on the side.)

Service at Siam Lotus is always fast. Everyone who works there is courteous, and I've never had an issue with anything despite visiting well over a 100 times over the years.

In summary, I highly recommend this place. For those who don't work or live in Norwood, and hence don't know of this place, Siam Lotus is an "under the radar" gem for traditional Thai food and a worthy...

So, since it was Mother’s Day, me and my family were finding a place to eat out. We ended up finding this place and went to eat here… on a positive note, the shonburi chicken was overall pretty good, as well as the fried rice and tiger salad, the papaya salad was good and the flavors were well blended. The atmosphere was rather fancy and kind of empty for a fancy looking restaurant. Now onto the less positive aspects… they took quite awhile to serve our food. (which took about one hour.) even though the water was free, it tasted kind of like plastic, another drink we got was Thai iced coffee, it was on the sweet side but overall mediocre tasting for coffee. In addition the floor looked like it had a lot of dirt, even if it is just the texture, in plus there was too much open space which is the reason it looked empty for me. But overall I would rate this experience a 3/5 since I empathize with their staff and the waitress even said they were pretty low on staff...

I’ve always been a huge fan of this restaurant. I’ve been coming here since 1987. Then it closed for a bit. I was thrilled when I heard that former employees had bought it and were resuming the business because they were keeping the menu. But ordering has been problematic ever since. Today was the last straw that broke my loyalty. I was told they were too busy to take an order over the phone and they told me to order online. I tried but kept getting an error message that the card wasn’t valid - though the $158 order appeared in my pending charges 3x (for each attempt). I called the restaurant back and they essentially said “tough”. Didn’t even bother to try and take my order over the phone. Maybe they will always be busy, but it will never be from my business. I’m done. The former managers Angie and Paul would never have treated a...