Lotus Blue

This restaurant is now closed, we went yesterday to the location but it is closed down and empty.
Edit: Their Website says they are moving to a new location but haven’t announced the date yet.

The cross bridge noodle dish is horrible! Horrible! It is way way different than the authentic cross bridge noodle from Yunnan, China. The soup is supposed to be chicken broth that is hot enough to boil the meat. But the waiter just poured in blank water. They don’t even make a slight effort to try. They got the ingredients wrong too. I can’t eat it. :-(It is so far away from what I had in China. I suggest they change the name of this dish, not using the word «cross bridge rice noodle». It is so misleading

Treated by a wonderful friend. Great yunnan food. Pot chicken definitely worth trying.

My boyfriend and I went there last night and were pleasantly surprised. Wait staff was attentive and the food excellent. I recommend scallion pancake and beef satay with Morning glory.
We will be back.

I just went to this restaurant last Saturday. I’m surprised it didn’t get better reviews. That’s why I want to write a review here and tell everyone: This is the BEST Chinese restaurant I have ever been to in Manhattan.
I’m Chinese, so I’m usually critical of Chinese restaurants. But Lotus Blue really surprised me with high quality food, ambience, and service. Usually you get noise and oily tables in Chinese restaurants, but here all you get is a quiet environment and very authentic Chinese design. Usually you get low-​quality service in Chinese restaurants and sometimes you would rather have buffet, but here you get patient, elaborated answers to your questions always with smile. It’s totally beyond my expectation.
OK, let’s talk about food. Yin & Yang is very good drink. It has real lychees. But if you like very sweet drink, don’t order it. It’s sweet, but not as sweet as most American drinks.
Smoked tofu papaya salad. Strongly recommended. The smoked tofu is very flavorful and has interesting texture. Only warning: it’s spicy. But you should be able to ask them to make it less spicy.
Steam-​pot Chicken. This is my favorite. I’m from East China, but Lotus Blue serves food from southwest China, so I have never had this dish before. But I went there to dine with a friend from that area in China, and even she gave compliments to this dish. It’s served with soup, chicken, and mushrooms. The soup is very tasty. Chicken and mushrooms are delicious.
We also tried other dishes, but these three are what I strongly recommend everyone to try.

The food is pretty good, and they have a nice range of spicy and very spicy dishes. I got the chicken with longhorn chilis and my noes and eyes were watering :) Lunch specials run around the $ 9-​$ 15. The place wasn’t super busy, maybe 20 people, with at least ²⁄₃ being Asian (a good sign). Not a bad option indeed if you’re stuck doing jury duty nearby on Thomas Street.
For me there were some cons. The service wasn’t great, in large part because they only had one server — so with ten tables, I don’t think anyone was getting great service. When you’re a solo diner, you also tend to get ignored more, in my experience. The other issue was that they say they have free wifi — but they refuse to give the password out — and as I was sitting in the back half of the restaurant, I had NO cellular reception.
Food: 3.5
Service I experienced: 1 star
I’m being generous with the overall rating because I’m guessing the service isn’t always this bad — but they’ve really got to clear up their wifi issue. if you’re not going to offer it, don’t list it.

This place really disappointed me. Not only was I transferred on the phone multiple times when I simply asked for the address, but the food was subpar. The rice was hard. What kind of Asian restaurant messes up rice? The soup was refreshing and the twice fried pork was pretty flavorful, but even at the cheap lunch special prices, this place isn’t worth it. My pineapple tofu dish tasted like canned pineapple sauce.

What a great place for lunch!!! I’m surprised to see that Lotus Blue doesn’t have higher ratings! This is a cute little restaurant tucked away in Tribeca serving yummy Chinese/​Thai food packed with flavor!
The restaurant is decorated nicely with lovely accents of Chinese/​Thai lanterns, little throw pillows and pictures frames all over the brick walls. I have always been happy with the service here with the servers being extremely nice and quick. They are happy to suggest things on the menu and are willing to accommodate spice levels and any substitutions!
I like coming here for lunch because you get a choice of soup or salad along with a good portion of the entrée with a side of rice. The lunch entrée is plenty of food for one person and my favorites are the Longhorn chicken and Basil chicken! Beware both of these entrees are spicy so just ask them to tone down the spice level if you don’t like spicy. I also always order the Thai iced tea because its delicious!!!
All in all a great little place in Tribeca for lunch!

This is a great place for Chinese food in Tribeca. I’m a huge fan of the butterfish with mushrooms and the spicy chicken with longhorn peppers. Despite the number of Chinese restaurants in NYC, I find it incredibly difficult to find a place that has edible food and is reasonably priced. Lotus Blue gets high marks for both. Drinks are also surprisingly good. I had the Jasmine Mist, which is jasmine infused tequila with orange liquor and orange juice. Generally, the drinks at Asian restaurants are syrupy and neon colored, but not here.
Additionally, the service is outstanding. The waiters go out of their way to make you feel welcomed

The free Chinese style chips is really good. Every traditional Chinese feeling. The food tastes so so, not as good as I expected. The spicy ground pork rice noodle is ok. The Shanghai vegetable is really small plate, not worth the money.

Not too shabby of a place to grab lunch. It has a decent ambience & décor (pillowed seating towards the walls), the lunch menu isn’t too ridiculous (you can usually leave with a $ 20 bill or less for lunch) and food quality isn’t bad.
I’m giving it 3 stars because of how outstandingly average this place is compared to all the other places in New York. But if you need a reliable place for lunch (or dinner) then look no further than Lotus Blue.
A few notes on the food:
— a coworker had the Spicy Cumin Lamb Cubes and he died of a spice attack (ok, maybe he’s not dead but he damn near died after eating this). The cumin is pretty overpowering.
— I’m a huge fan of the Chicken Mango Stir Fry
— the Garlic Chive Blossom Pork is pretty delish too

Went specifically to taste these 3 dishes I took the picture of. Was with a friend who knows this place well.
The mango salad was delicious, refreshing, spicy, crunchy. Good.
The soup got almost cold by the time we decided it was the time to stop chatting and start eating, but it was good anyway and with a clear nice broth and light protein.
There was a bit of spice but just the right amount.
The tiger prawns I liked because of the sauce and the recipe, with those interesting candies olives which make it special, not too sweet and not to sour. The prawns themselves were like all others elsewhere. Big and with a mild shrimp taste. There come 6 in the dish, which makes it a big entrée.
It’s pretty expensive, which would make me cut a star but service was nice and friendly so I will not cut it. And portions are big so you can just order one dish and that’s it.
Tried no desserts.

I’ve been here for midweek lunch a bunch of times. It’s excellent. The Lijiang spicy butterfish is amazing, and ridiculously cheap ($ 11) for the quality.
The soup that comes free with the main is always pumpkin and mushroom, every single time. It’s good, but would be lovely if they’d find a second recipe :)

Worst Chinese restaurant! It is «fushioned» in such a bad way that it does not hit the Chinese food spot, nor the novelty spot.
For example, over the Chinese New Year Eve, a group of us had a big dinner, during which we encountered tough-​as-​rubber ribs, uncooked dumplings (food safety, guys! food safety! You can not serve raw ground pork, please!), and most ridiculous of all — the wine was watered down. Yup, you heard me. Not just one type of wine — we tried 3 white wines and at least 2 red wines, each tastes like it has been diluted…
This is sheer insanity. Will never, ever, go back.

Went here for dinner on a Friday night with a group of friends and the food was very delicious. There is plenty of seating, but a reservation is recommended. The best dish of the night was by far the Yunnan Double Pepper Stir-​Fried Pork. It was really tasty and had a perfect amount of spice. The Shredded Roast Duck Fried Rice was very smoky and tasty as well. The scallion pancake was a bit lackluster and the Traditional Yunnan Steam Pot Chicken was not worth the price. Overall, the service was decent and there was some really good food.

I went here for my friend and my combined birthday dinner.
Ambience is great and they give you a free appetizer if you liked their page on Facebook and we got a dumpling which was awesome!!!
Every single dish we had was just so yummy and truly enjoyed every bite of them.
I will definitely come back here again!

Ok food. Strangely bland and tries to make up for it with extra grease and saltiness. We pretty much had everything on the menu. Ranged from good (potstickers) to perfectly mediocre (mostly everything else). Nothing was memorable per se. Some of the dishes looked identically cooked/​sauced except for slightly different ingredients — typically sign of a bad Chinese restaurant where they have simply stopped trying.
Service is horrendous both times I went there. Waiters gave terrible recommendations and had bit of an attitude to boot.
Prefer Khe-​Yo which is somewhat similar cuisine regionally but much nicer experience overall.

Came here with 4 other girls from work for lunch and it was the perfect spot! Service was great and the food was even better!
We started with scallion pancake (perfectly flaky), Grilled Lemongrass Spare Ribs (a bit bland), Mushroom pot stickers (super yummy!) and Roast Duck Fried Rice (yum, but the Ginger Duck fried rice from Red Farm is still my fav!).
For entrée, we tried the Dali Chicken (perfectly cooked with a tiny bit of spice), Stir-​Fried Rice Noodles with Chicken, Shrimp and Beef (good) and Spicy Basil Chicken (just OK) — the Dali chicken was def the best! Wasn’t that impressed with the entrees, hence the 4 stars.
Then we order every dessert and I loved all of them. The Mango Mochi ice cream was everyone’s fav, but I think that’s b/​c no one else was familiar with the other desserts — the coconut tapioca pudding, durian roll and tang yuan (red bean and blk sesame) were all pretty good :)
Def coming back!!!

Very solid Asian fusion fare was had at Lotus Blue. My friend and I were so thrilled to have stumbled into this gem of a restaurant while on our way to Zutto a few blocks away. We noticed a few diners inside and the décor was very cute so we ventured on in. The moment I walked through the doors, we were warmly greeted by amazing smells as dishes went from the kitchen to dining tables.
We quickly ordered after just a quick glance at the menu: 2 Thai iced teas, 1 pineapple and shrimp fried rice, and their special menu item, wild mushroom beef brisket stew. My friend gulped the iced tea down within a minute of the server putting it down on the table and then proceeded to order another (who cares about a sleepless night that results from having too much caffeine when it tastes this good?). The fried rice was good, but not extraordinary. The stew special on the other hand … Blew us out of the waters. The different kind of mushrooms they offered had amazing textures that tasted even better than the brisket. This dish was particularly good on a cold day.
Service is very friendly and efficient. They were so nice and accommodating to us, showing up with what we requested at the right moments. The décor is simple, balanced between elegant and casual. I would definitely call this a cute date night spot that will leave the other impressed, but you won’t have to spend a fortune.

Gong Hey Fat Choy!
We forgo the usual large Chinese banquette hall, frenetic waiters, round tables full of hungry ravenous Asians full of food on the every spinning Lazy Susan piled with food for representing prosperity and wealth for a more upscale, classy Chinese New Year’s dinner. This Yunnan style cuisine spot in Tribeca was the chosen restaurant.
We had a lovely niche table along the front window for our group dinner. The server was eager and helpful in the menu selection as I was in charge of the food. A table of 7, we figured several appetizers and 5 dishes should be a plentiful, bountiful cornucopia of Yunnan cuisine. So what did we order you wonder? For Good Luck we started with both the Pork & Chive and the mushroom Pot Stickers. Grilled Prawns to share. Entrées was the Multigrain rice with mushroom, Grilled whole Sea Bass with cumin, Prawns with candied olives, Pearl ribs, Chili Chicken and mushroom & bamboo stir-​fry, plus Jasmine rice. We even order dessert.
The food came out extraordinarily fast for a packed busy dinner service. I mean like faster than a speeding bullet or Speedy Gonzales (for those born after 1989, he is a Mexican rodent cartoon). The dishes that came out all were well made and presented. The table favorite was the Sea Bass which was moist and flavor. The Chili Chicken was delicious and probably had the most reminiscent of Yunnan. The prawns where good and the candied olives add a nice sweet touch.
We may have been bringing in the year of the Horse but the way we were scurrying and scrounging for food on the table you think it was the year of the rat. I failed to consider that I wasn’t at our typical dinner scenario. While the food was good but clearly wasn’t enough to feed a table to 7. Where in any other circumstance there would be leftovers a couple lunches.
Maybe this is an ominous sign of bounty and the thunderous stampede of money flying out of the wallet to pay for the meal. Eating here will certainly be sliming on the waste-​line and pocket book. While waste-​line sure… fortunes…not quite the way I wanted to bring in 2014.

I neeeeeed to go back to Lotus Blue — delicious, authentic*, spicy, Yunnan (south Chinese) food. The dishes are big on aromatics and carry a big 1 – 2 punch to the palate. The owners are pretty saavy and also deliver on several fusion dishes (like their desserts and cocktails) which keep those who dislike the heat more comfortable.
At the recommendation of the amazing Jonathan, our server, we ordered the following dishes, family style, so we could all share:
— Double pepper stir fry pork*
— spicy cumin lamb cubes*
— Shrimp pineapple rice — this is fusion
— Mung bean salad*
— Duck salad
— A fried fish dish I can’t recollect anymore but was tasty
Everything was delicious and perfectly accompanied by a big bowl of fluffy rice and some tea. However, the dishes we ordered are really spicy, so sensitive stomachs may not be advised to partake in more adventurous orders.
Unlike most Chinatown establishments, Lotus Blue is designed beautifully, including a lovely bar area. The price point is also higher than in Chinatown, but the quality and comfort of the restaurant make it worth it. Lotus Blue is younger, hipper, and more svelte. Service is excellent, with knowledgeable and quick staff. Feel free to make this a date location, a place to grab «exotic» cocktails with your girlfriends, or just an exciting eatery to check off your food bingo board.