Maison Lotus — Restaurant in Radnor Township

We went for a late dinner for 2 around 8PM with reservations. The restaurant was packed when we arrived. We were thankfully able to be seated on the second floor and had no wait time. The second floor has about 4 flights of steps to get up. Not sure if there is an elevator available for wheelchair access. The whole restaurant has a very boujee and upscale atmosphere, we did feel a bit underdressed. Also, it is quite dark. If you’re visually impaired, you will have difficulty in this restaurant especially at the dining tables. Service was very quick despite how busy it was. We were in and out in 50 minutes!

To give a sense of the restaurants’s price, for 2 appetizers, 2 entrees, and 1 drink, our total with gratuity was around $142.

We shared the Maison 175 cocktail, which is described as a mixture of lychee-infused vodka, lemon, lemongrass, and sparkling rosé. It comes with a peeled lychee fruit on top, which was a nice little treat. The drink itself was okay. I wasn’t too amazed by the taste and felt it was mostly the sparkling rosé that I tasted. Lychee is a very faint flavor and I think the flavor got a little lost in the cocktail. I would probably opt to try a different drink next time.

We ordered the Hot Stone Wagyu and the Leaf Wrapped Wagyu appetizers. The Hot Stone Wagyu comes with about 4-5 thin slices of wagyu, a hot stone, a piece of tallow, and a vinaigrette sauce. You use the tallow to grease up the hot stone, then you place the wagyu on the hot stone to sear/cook for a few seconds. Finally, you dip the wagyu in the sauce and enjoy. It was definitely an interesting experience. Outside of the novelty, I couldn’t help but think the wagyu slices were actually subpar. Because the tallow wasn’t rich in flavor, the wagyu didn’t have much flavor either. You can also see in the images that the marbling isn’t the best on the wagyu slices, so it didn’t have a tasty, “melt-in-your-mouth” effect. I probably would not get the Hot Stone Wagyu appetizer again. We also ordered the Leaf Wrapped Wagyu, which I enjoyed a lot more. There are 4 small pieces, each is about the size of a AA battery. The dish came with a sauce called yuzu kosho labneh, which I can only describe in terms of taste and consistency as a mixture of Greek yogurt and sour cream. I actually really liked this appetizer and thought the wagyu and perilla leaves worked well together, and the sauce gave it a light creaminess to balance out the flavor of the leaves. The biggest downsize is the size/quantity of the rolls. If we returned in the future, I would order this appetizer again and I would highly recommend to others to try this appetizer!

For my entree, I got the Shaking Beef. It comes with 6 large beef/tenderloin tips and a small bowl of rice. It was prepared medium rare, which I prefer. The beef was good, but the sauce it came in was a little too salty. I think the serving size is also quite small, but I would recommend trying this entree since it tasted quite good.

Overall, this is quite a boujee spot. The restaurant has good but overly expensive food. For 2 appetizers, 2 entrees, and 1 drink, we paid $142 including tip. Although the food was tasty, we can’t justify the price for the serving sizes. If you’re looking to have a full stomach without hurting your wallet, there are other affordable asian restaurants in the area that taste just as good, if not better, than Maison Lotus. However, I would recommend trying Maison Lotus out for the atmosphere and the...

Atmosphere: The new decor is nice, but the main dining area is quite cramped-tables are too close together, and it gets loud. Not ideal if you’re hoping for a relaxed meal.

Service: The service was very pleasant. Staff were friendly and attentive.

Starters: The dumplings and beef salad were both quite flavourful and well-spiced. The dumpling skin was soft and thin, the filling was tasty, and the sauce was well-balanced with acidity. The beef salad was very flavourful and was sufficiently spicy, though the beef seemed more fried than grilled, which wasn’t ideal. Still, both were worth the price and I would eat them again.

Mains: This is where things started to go downhill. The so-called “spicy green curry” came out beige and tasted as bland as it looked—no depth of flavour, no spice. I dread to think what their curry paste is like. The rice was even worse: poor quality, hard, and tasted like it came from a cheap takeaway. Given that the owners are originally Thai, I’m not sure how they’re satisfied with serving this.

The sea bass with glass noodles was better, but still not great. It tasted nice and the fish was cooked well, but the dish lacked real flavour and felt a bit clumsily put together. Maybe they went lighter on the seasoning to let the fish come through, which I can appreciate, but the glass noodles became tiresome after a few mouthfuls.

Sides: The mushroom sticky rice was truly horrible. Oily, with a dusty taste instead of any real mushroom or umami flavour. I don’t know why they don’t just serve good quality, plain sticky rice—if their dishes were better spiced and balanced, plain sticky rice would be a great addition. The Chinese broccoli, on the other hand, was nice: well cooked and a light, fresh addition to the meal.

Desserts: Desserts were not pleasant at all. I’ve heard good things about the crepe cake, but I didn’t try it. The lychee blossom and yuzu tart looked nice but were technically very poor. The yuzu tart was overset, the pastry was too hard and didn’t crumble like a pastry case should. The sauce poured over the top just made the whole thing soggy and was an ill-conceived gimmick. I’d rather have a simple, well-made pastry than a showy but poorly executed dessert.

The lychee blossom had promise, but the rhubarb compote was gloopy and completely overpowered the delicate lychee flavour. It ruined what could have been an otherwise inventive and interesting dessert.

Conclusion: Ultimately, I hoped this would be a great addition to the restaurants in Wayne, but it needs a lot of work. Much more focus needs to be given to the quality of the food, and only then will their prices be justified. Currently, I would go to Cornerstone or At The Table for a special meal or go to Takumi Bar/Bistro in Devon for simple, good...

As someone who grew up eating Asian food in a Viet household, I came with an open mind because they seemed to do a lot of things differently. A lot of dishes fell flat for our party of 3. We ordered 8 dishes and I think my review might help shed some light to the restaurant.

Lobster shumai barely had any lobster and is a dry consistency. Dim sum foods should be plump and juicy. The wagyu hot stone was not tender like one you would think, so it leads me to believe it was American "wagyu". The "pillow bread" they call it is called banh tieu. So labeling it as pillow bread is misleading because it is quite literally a chewy type of Vietnamese pastry. If I knew this, I wouldn't have gotten it. And the dips it came with is too heavy. The mushroom sticky rice, I imagined, was supposed to be sticky rice with some mushrooms in it. But when it came out, it is prepared like porridge or congee. Basically slop, I'm sorry. There are many variations of sticky rice in Asian dishes but this one was cooked with way too much water to be called sticky rice unless you sauce it right. For the salmon, it was cooked well, however, pairing it with coconut sauce was a mistake in my opinion. You have a very fatty fish laid on top of a coconut sauce which is heavy in taste, makes it a little tough to stomach. The brussel sprouts were good though. The sea bass on the other hand, was not fresh. It had a fishy taste and almost like it was frozen, refrigerated, or preserved too long. The shaky beef filet is not the shaken beef you would think you'd get. Because it has a weird after taste when you chew and eat it, most likely from a tenderizer. It doesn't have the elements of a "shaken" beef at all so I guess it is their take. It is quite literally pepper steak but filet. The 2 desserts we had were also just okay. In general, the restaurant seems to go heavy on coconut, which is fine but it doesn't always go with the dish it should go with. I was expecting some pickled radish or elements of mint leaves as you would see in Viet restaurants, so this is a 2 star restaurant for me for the food only. Aside from this, we also ordered 5 drinks and it was not bad. I am not writing this to bash anyone, but to convey that the dish composition doesn't seem quite right. I understand it might be a popular restaurant, but at least for us, it wasn't a hit for our party. We wouldn't recommend it to our families either if we wanted a spin...