White Lotus

We ordered dinner for two here on Saturday night for takeout, the larb salad with chicken and green curry with veggies. The green curry was extremely oily and the chicken in the larb salad was gray and didn’t taste quite right. My partner ended up with gastrointestinal distress from this meal later in the evening. We really wanted to love this place since we live close by, maybe it was an off night but we won’t be going back.

My cousin and I live in Santa Cruz County. We had never been to Albany prior to 3/12/22, my birthday, when we attended a gig at the Ivy Room across the street. We hadn't eaten all day so we were STARVING. The White Lotus was nearly closed but served us an ample meal, plus kept the kitchen open for our dessert orders an hour after closing time. We had Pad Thai with Tofu, Sweet & Sour (sauteed) Shrimp, fried calamari, egg rolls, and took plenty of food home. We had mango sticky rice and fried bananas and coconut ice cream for dessert. Forgive my menu choices but I loved fried food. They had pages and pages of other choices. Service was excellent and our orders were delivered quickly and accurately, i.e. "no green pepper" on the sweet & sour shrimp. We were there until 10:20 even though they closed at 9pm, and never chased us out. Awesome staff, clean restaurant and facilities, food was presented beautifully with large wedges of fresh oranges. Delightful! Now we know where to eat in the East Bay.

Sadly this was worst takeout I’ve had. Very little flavor in the veggie Tom Ka soup or the tofu spring rolls. The papaya salad wasn’t bad, but there was very little of it since it was placed on top of a high bed of lettuce. I feel bad writing this, and I hope it was just an off night for them, but given that my mom paid $60 for this, I really felt like an honest review was called for here.

We come here a lot and there’s hardly ever more than two or three parties in here... I’m sad that they’ll close down... the food is absolutely incredible! The servers are wonderful and they’ll even let you practice Thai with them! I always get the Khao Soi, but I’ve had other items and they’re all delicious. Please patronize this wonderful restaurant. I can’t stand to see them go!