Layonna Vege Restaurant

[Guest guest]

I thought I'd share my experience with Layonna's here, while I wait to

post a review in the Ultimate Guide until I see what happens.

 

My husband and I have been shopping at Layonna's store for years, buying

her fake meat products for our cooking. We were very excited when the

new restaurant opened up. We've gone about 7-8 times now for both Dim

Sum and dinner. Almost everything has been good, save for a few dishes

that fall prey to the sometimes-bland Buddhist dietary principles. Dim

Sum has been amazing, and pretty cheap, too. The BBQ pork buns, the

mustard buns, etc. have been very tasty.

 

So what's the problem? Well, the last three times we went, we saw

roaches. Now, I'm not so naive to think that many restaurants don't

have them. However, I have never been to one where a roach walked

across the table while I was eating, for example. I know that roaches

don't spread diseases, etc. but I do not want to see them when I'm

eating or find them in my food. I wonder whether this has anything to

do with them being Buddhist and not wanting to use poison. I can

certainly understand this position, but when you run a restaurant, you

simply cannot have roaches there or you will get fined, forced to spray,

or even closed down.

 

I plan to write a letter to Layonna but I thought I'd just see if anyone

had any suggestions in doing so. I'd hate to see yet another restaurant

that caters to our community suffer but I am not going to go there again

unless I know this problem has been taken care of.

 

Thanks!

Emily

[Guest guest]

Hi all,

 

I missed seeing the original post about the roach problem (behind in my

email reading), but the two times I ate at Layonna I can report no

roaches seen. Last time was this last weekend.

 

But I saw mention that they usually use msg in their food. I would

really like to avoid msg, I've had bad reaction to it in the past. And

judging by the translating help the waitress has needed both times I've

been there, I'm not feeling very confident that making a request for no

msg (or at least no added msg? but why is Layonna using it at all??)

would be understood, or honored. Maybe I didn't read the menu closely

enough, but I don't think they mention on the menu that they use msg.

So I'll come for the Chinese New Year's dinner on Feb. 24th (Winnie,

can you consider this my rsvp? Thank you for organizing this!) but I'm

not going back on my own until both the roach and the msg problems are

resolved.

 

Janice

 

P.S. - Did anyone else catch Michelle Simon on KPOO radio last Saturday

morning, talking about food policy and food justice? It was a very good

interview. Unfortunately KPOO does not archive their shows at all, so

no way to listen if you missed it.