Casual yet elegant, Lotus Blue is New York’s first full service restaurant offering Chinese food inspired by the cuisine of Yunnan province. Tucked in the southwest corner of China, Yunnan begins as a tropical lowland in the south and rises steadily up the steep slopes of the Himalayan Mountains to the border of Tibet in the north. Local chefs have a wide variety of ingredients from which to choose.
In the tropical regions, Yunnan cuisine borrows freely from neighboring Thailand and Burma and uses spices such as lemongrass, mint, purple basil and cilantro. Yunnan cuisine also uses an abundance of tropical flowers and fruits. In our menu mango rounds out the flavors in the banana blossom salad, spicy chrysanthemum greens form the base of another salad, and a coconut tapioca pudding is topped off with rose hips and rose petal syrup.
Cured beef, ham and mushrooms are specialties in the cooler climes of the north. At Lotus Blue you can choose from a wide variety of mushroom dishes including crisp-fried beech and enoki mushrooms, stir-fried trumpet mushrooms or a soup with bamboo pith and shiitake mushrooms.
Although the food is recognizably Chinese, the use of local ingredients in distinctive combinations creates full-flavored refreshing dishes that make dining at Lotus Blue a unique experience.