Legend Vegetarian Restaurant

Please Re-​open this place!
The food was INCREDIBLE! My husband and I are both vegan. We have brought a few omnivore friends here and my meat loving mother here and got rave reviews from them!
When I came back to visit and saw it was gone I could have cried!
Please come back!

RIP, Legend Vegetarian Restaurant! I recently found out about the restaurant closing when reading the the recent newsletter from the Vegetarian Society of Hawaii. My hope was to someday take my veggie-​loving (or at least –tolerating) boyfriend to Legend though we’ve gotten sidetracked with Downbeat Diner and Cuu Long II because of their better hours. Oh well! Where else to get good all-​vegetarian dim sum?

I am really sad because this spot is now closed! Being allergic to shrimp this was my go to dim sum spot for fresh flavorful dim sum. I hope that they start offering the vegetarian stuff at legends! I especially miss the vegetarian hau gau! I don’t think there is any replacement for this spot on the island — I am sure sad to see it closed!

My late father introduced me to this place, since he was full on vegetarian and was trying to control his diabetes. He loved his Chinese food, but wanted to keep tabs with his weight and health. With that being said, I have come to this place for years until Unilocal happened in my life. I’ve since started to check in whenever I had a craving for some of Legend’s vegetarian cuisine. It is technically quinessential Chinese food, no doubt, but it is made without animal products — at least that’s what they say.
You have your regular Chinese dim sum favorites, but of course, with the vegetarian flare to it. It is Chinese food after all, so be prepared for typical Chinese oily food, typical Chinese service, and a small enough restaurant, so you can see what everyone’s eating within the restaurant. I rarely have a favorite here, since I don’t normally eat Chinese cuisine and I am Chinese. It’s strange, but yes. Sometimes you can’t taste the difference from real Chinese food offerings and the vegetarian stuff they have over here. Give it a shot and you’ll be glad you did.
They are located in Chinatown, next door to the regular Legend restaurant on the outskirts of the Chinatown Gateway Plaza. There is normally a wait during the weekends, with plenty of regulars going for dim sum on Saturdays and Sundays. Sundays are the worst though. Just like brunch for most others, dim sum is what drives others to come out on a Sunday morning after sleeping or church. Or sometimes both. Overall, I do enjoy my time when I come to this place, although I am not a fan of Chinese food in general. The parking can be a pain in the ass, when you got to park on the street or in the Cultural Plaza parking garage, which can cost up to $ 5 per hour.
Service here can be hit or miss. Use your descretion.
C+

First off, I don’t care what you say, this is MY Unilocal… and MY Unilocal review.
That being said, I totally loved this place because I could eat EVERYTHING on the menu. The best part was eating the mochi rice without having to have to take out the meat. I’m in love.
Yes…some dishes are a bit oily, and probably not healthy… but whatevers… It’s Chinese food! What do you expect!?!
It is only open from lunch… and closed on Wednesday.
FYI: If you’re sitting on the «regular» side with people that eat meat… you can still order food from the «vegetarian» side (except Wednesdays)…and vice versa.
Unilocal 365 Challenge #126/​365

One of my aunt’s invited a group of us relatives here for vegetarian dim sum. This is one meal I look forward to having each time in Hawaii. It’s one where I can have peace of mind.
My favorite was the tofu bean curd wrap. It’s brown and I think braised. I like that it’s a little chewy, yet full of vegetables. Another one of aunts liked the shu mai, which had a yellow wrapper. I thought it was rather plain, but when I added some hot sauce, it livened it up. One of my uncles liked the taro puff, which looked like Chinese bird nest’s soup encased on the outside. I would pass on that next time, I thought it was rather blah.
They all were steaming hot, except for the dessert one, jin dui, which I was rather disappointed in. The sesame mochi type bun with black bean filling was greasy. I don’t like greasy.
What I liked here, is that there are thinly wrapped dim sum and thickly wrapped dim sum. Where else can you get this assortment of vegetarian dim sum? I wish they would open a branch in L.A.

Wow, this is the best vegetarian food I’ve ever eaten! If I could eat this all the time, I would go vegetarian! And that’s quite a compliment considering my profile tagline…
The dishes are pretty hit or miss, but if you know what to get, your experience will be divine. We ordered the e-​mein with mushrooms, which is different from regular mein, but in a deliciously great way! We also ordered the sweet and sour vegetarian pork, which was made of gluten, with the right texture of meat, and still delicious without the extremely meaty taste. Our third dish was vegetarian braised fish, and although it was made of tofu, it was clever of them to use nori to bring out the seafood flavor. All in all, the dishes were very delicious and light, which is pretty nice because I always leave Chinese restaurants feeling really gross or having heartburn because of the excessive amount of oil in the food.
That being said, I want to point out that the dim sum isn’t really worth ordering because all the delicious dim sum has meat in it, and the ones they offer are the same boring vegetarian ones you can order in other dim sum restaurants.
This restaurant is a little more quiet than the Seafood bit across the hall, and the service is less hectic as well. Of course they’re Chinese servers, so Westerners would find their service rude, but if you’re understanding and used to this kind of treatment, you’re in for a real treat!

I love this place for good vegetarian dim sum. As other Unilocalers have said, the dim sum is always hot and the textures are great — you won’t get any of those weird «What the heck is this substance that I am eating?» feelings.
The only reason it is four stars instead of five is the service, which as a few other people have mentioned is pretty bad. You will have to harass the waitstaff for more water, or to bring the cart around, or for just about everything. Oh and you will definitely know when they think you are eating too much! :-p But it’s not so bad that I would stop going because of it — I have to thicken my skin a bit anyways…

My first dim sum meal of the year!
Every new year, my family and I will go to this place. It’s almost like tradition. Since a lot of the older folks in my family are vegetarians, we end up here a lot for family style dim sum. Since we come here so often, the service to me is good, but I think one should expect the typical Chinese hospitality.
They offer a lot of vegetarian style dishes that are suppose to look and taste similar to the non-​vegetarian dim sum dishes. Of course, the vegetarian dishes will never taste exactly the same because they use soy and tofu based products, but they are good and flavorful for vegetarian food in my opinion. The vegetarian noodles dishes are also very good.
What I like about this place and what suits well for our family is that we can order food from Legends next door. They are sister restaurants and so they just bring the food from the other side. This lets everyone in our family, vegetarian and non-​vegetarian alike, order something that they will enjoy. My favorite thing from the Legends next door is the chive dumplings.
Food: Great
Ambiance: Good
Service: Typical Chinese hospitality
Worth Another Visit: Yes

Haha, I almost marked this as a 3-​star review, the reason being «they have no meat» UNTIL i realized what an idiot i was being. That’s the whole point!
The dim sum here is GOOD, and for the most part you don’t miss the meat, but in all honesty– there is still a little part of you that does miss it. The food here was all good to me. The textures and flavors were amazing. If they had these vegetarian items at another dim sum places, I would order the vegetarian alongside the traditional dim sum.
The reason I missed the meat isn’t so much that the food here isn’t as good, the real reason I missed the meat is that my favorite dumplings can’t really be replicated without meat (like har gao).
But I really thought this place was great! I’m surprised to see the negative reviews. Perhaps I came on a good day, or perhaps I just don’t know my dim sum. GASP! I hope that’s not the case.
Anyway, service was good and I enjoyed the food. After eating here I did sneak out for an andagidog, though.