Lotus Restaurant — Restaurant in Ashland

This one's tough. Did I give it two stars because I'm picky? Maybe. Did I give it two stars because the bathroom was the cleanest smelling room in the place? It's possible. But the most likely reason I gave it 2 stars was because the food was awful. Sorry guys, it really was.

At first glance the menu looked awesome. They are under new ownership and it shows...they are trying to make the place look classy. However, the sushi is not described in the menu, other than the chef specials, so you have to ask the wait staff what is in each roll if you don't already know. Our server said it was difficult to remember all of the rolls and she had to double check to make sure she wasn't giving us bad information about about the sushi.

They had a special that was $14.95 for Your choice of appetizer, soup, sushi roll, and chef's special roll. I decided to give that a try. I chose miso soup, steamed shiumai (a shrimp dumpling), the Crispy Lotus Roll, and asked if they had a sushi roll that had salmon, cream cheese, and cucumber, but they didn't have one. I was told the Philadelphia Roll had cucumber, cream cheese, and crab meat. I opted for that.

First the miso soup came out. It was very weak and watery, and not hot - only tepid (Certainly not hot enough to prevent microbial growth), so I sent it back and asked for hot and sour soup. She brought it out and it was also pale and watery, and neither hot, nor HOT nor sour. It WAS soup, so one out of three? I asked for some vinegar to make the soup sour, but I couldn't fix it. I Pushed it aside and moved on to the shiumai.

The shiumai wrapper was pale white and waterlogged. It tasted like old frozen food that had been microwaved. Yuck! Bad taste, bad smell, bad texture. I pushed that aside, too.

The sushi rolls were presented nicely, each displayed upon a leaf, both on the same plate. Mind you, the chef's special roll is hot and the other roll is cold… supposedly. In this case, the rice that was supposed to be cold on the outside of the Philadelphia roll was cool but definitely not cold, as were the contents. Additionally, imitation crab was used - not real crab meat. They should be more specific because if I had had a fish allergy I could be writing this from the hospital. The other roll was hot but had a very fishy flavor, not like other sushi that I've had for the past 40 years. I ate both the rolls with trepidation... Honestly I was a little worried about the quality, and, unfortunately, my fears were founded. About an hour and a half after we ate, I felt sick to my stomach and I had to be sure I was close to a restroom.

I am very underwhelmed by the quality of the food here. The wait person that we had was chipper and cheerful, and appears to truly believe in the quality of the product. She checked on us appropriately and made sure we had everything we needed. She was the best part of this place other than the chocolate fortune...

I'm not usually one to make comments, but I do feel this was necessary. We get to the restaurant and were seated. We should've seen the red flag within the first few minutes when our server asked us what we wanted to drink, and they were out of my husband's favorite beer-- Sapporo. But sometimes restaurants are out of stuff, so okay. Next, he asks for an Asahi. The server tells us, "Actually, I'm pretty sure we are out of all of those weird-named beers listed on the bottom."

Weird named beers, she says. The three "weird named beers" shes referring to are Sapporo, Asahi, and Tsingtao. The three Asian beers. In a Chinese/Japanese restaurant. You can imagine how that looked (especially considering my husband is half-Japenese).

Many other things went wrong during this whole experience, but what really made it worse, was the sushi boat we ordered.

Was I expecting really amazing sushi in a place like this? No. Was I expecting edible sushi? I mean, yeah? We get a sushi boat with very watery-gross sushi. And the kicker? All of the sashimi was stuck together and FROZEN. I'm not a picky person. I even enjoy Giant Eagle sushi from time-to-time. But this, to me, is unacceptable.

I wouldn't go back.

Edit: We went on Saturday, 2/17/24. This was our Valentine's day date. I'd love to validate by showing our bank statement.

We ordered edamame, general tso's chicken, and a sushi boat.

I'd love to talk to the owner if they...

Finally, a Chinese restaurant worth the name! I ordered my two staples at any Chinese place, steamed dumplings and hot and sour soup. The soup, not quite living up to its name, was however very good, lots of different flavors and textures. It just needed some white pepper to bring up the heat and the sour was a bit lacking, but present. The dumplings, however, were very good, for being just dumplings. I miss when potstickers were on the menu, better flavor and texture. These however were full of flavor, pork, scallions, a hint of ginger, quite tasty. And the dipping sauce was savory with an odd sweet hint in there somewhere. Good, but not great. I ordered the Double mix chicken and shrimp and was happy with the spice level. Very good flavor with dried chili's added while cooking to give it a proper heat level, very good. I also ordered the Sezchuan beef. Very good but I requested a kick of spice but was left disappointed. That is not to say it lacked flavor, it didnt, but it had none of the spice I was hoping for. Had pleasant conversation with the manager at several points through the meal, indicating my preferences to hotter spice and flavor and complimenting where I found joyful tastes. I highly recommend this as the best Chinese restaurant I have been to in the Ashland area, you will not go wrong by...