Lemon Leaves

This place go by several names (Lemon Leaves, Koodo Sushi, 顾, Szechuan and Beyond) and it serves a combination of Thai Chinese and Japanese dishes. I have a lot of Chinese colleagues in my team and Lemon Leaves has become our go-​to place for a sit down team lunch in FiDi and I had good experience every time. We often came in a big group so ordering usually takes a little while. Servers are courteous and came back to check on us every couple of minutes. Food is good and service is fast. Perfect for a working lunch.

So that happened.
I know often times popular dishes are pre-​made. I’ve had my share of mushy takeout. But the level of mush from the dish I got here was above and beyond. It was almost as if it was reheated from the same vat of mush from the day before. The noodles were soggy. The chicken (was that even chicken) was mushy. The green veggies were the same color as the noodles. In fact, the supposed colorful dish I got was pretty monotoned. I may have well been eating baby food.
Two stars for customer service, they were nice, but please freshen up those entrees. This was almost the worst Thai I’ve ever had. Almost.

As a NYC resident, I have ordered Thai food more times than I can count so I have a pretty good sample size to declare that this place is hands down the WORST.
The chicken curry puffs were drenched in so much oil, it was disgusting to eat. I kid you not, if you took a bite of their curry puff, oil would spill out. It left such a bad taste in my mouth, it will be a long long time before I have the courage to order curry puffs at another place again.
The drunken noodles («noodle mao») had ZERO flavor and were stuck together, stiff, and rubbery. Oh and did I mention again, literally dripping in oil?! It was just terrible.
I was thinking about calling them to complain, but did not trust that I would get another dish that was palatable and/​or spit-​free. A complete and utter waste of $ 20.

Ok, so I decided to visit this place for lunch and here is the low-​down
Lemongrass wings– terrible (zero stars)
Cashew nut chichen– literally swimming in oil and it was cold .yuck! (1 star because they added spice to my taste)
Thai ice tea– 90% milk but since it was the best dish there I had two glasses (2 ½ stars)
Customer service– some dude left because he waited forever to be seated. I wish I was that lucky. (1 star)

I tried Drunken Noodle with chicken and Pad Thai with Shrimp. Both of them were good. I liked sweet sauce on Drunken Noodle. Pad Thia came with a lot of shrimps.

I frequently order Panang Curry from Lemon Leaves as they’re one of the few in FiDi that get it right. Pro is that they give you a good quantity of the curry. I removed one star because they literally only give you enough rice for a toddler, making you almost have to order a side of rice, etc.

I was sad Lemongrass Grill closed. Not anymore, now that I know Lemon Leaves cooks/​serves Thai food as well as Japanese food.
Located basement level, it’s a HUGE venue. In a separate smaller room, you’ll find an intimate bar. The main restaurant space is 2 diff rooms which is great for reserving for office parties, birthday parties, you get what I’m sayin.
I ordered the Kratium Thai including a small bowl of white rice & greens (found under either Seafood or Fish section). Dish cost around $ 15. It’s a HUGE filet of a white fish, lightly breaded and perfectly cooked — flesh was moist. Albeit, I saw a bed of oil under the fish as I ate the last bites of it. I thoroughly enjoyed it and left no morsel behind.

I’ve walked passed Lemon Leaves (Nassau Street/​Liberty Street) every day and never took notice of the place until my wife told she went with a couple of her colleagues. She had nothing but good things to say about this place and Mr. Kuma San. So my friend and I check it out last night.
As you go downstairs to enter the bar which is on the left, there is a restaurant area on the right. You know me, I took the left. The bar is small with a CHEERS feel, where everyone knows one another and Kuma San (bartender) is doing his thing with the drinks. I’ll tell you, Kuma San really knows how to make a strong drink. Thank goodness for Sapporo.
This spot will be my go to place from now on.

I was recently introduced to Lemon Leaves by some of my colleagues. I will tell you, I have passed by this place so many times and did not even know it was there! You have to go below street level get into the bar/​restaurant — if you’re not looking for it, it can be easily missed. I have been there twice for drinks and once for lunch.
Once you go downstairs, you can either make a left and go into the bar or make a right and go into the restaurant. The décor in both is cozy — not super fancy, but a cool hang out spot.
The bar area is small and the bar takes up most of the space, along with some seats — awesome. The bartender, Kuma San, is great. Boy does he know how to make a drink! You get Goldfish at the bar to munch on, but you can order food from the restaurant as well. It is a nice vibe — there are lots of folks stopping by for drinks before going home. It makes me think that this is the «spot» for many that work in the area. I will warn you, you could lose track of time down in that bar!
When I went for lunch, the food was good. It wasn’t the most awesome Thai food I’ve ever had, but it was good. I shared the Pork Chops and Thai Fried Rice with a friend and it was good. There are also Japanese and Chinese menu choices as well.
I like this little hidden place — I think it’s going to become my «spot» as well.

Kuma San makes the best drinks and is the best bartender I know in the city.

I went with a bunch of colleagues for thai food. Everyone enjoyed it, and I had some of the best Laksa.

Ordered the pad thai and the red curry via seamless. It arrived quickly. The food was pretty decent, the red curry had a good flavor.
Unfortunately, they only give you about a thimble full of white rice to eat with the curry, so I could only enjoy about 3 bites before that was gone. I called to complain and ask them to send me more rice, thinking for sure they had just forgotten to include another container and that the tiny container in the bag could only be the lime/​etc for the pad thai, right? The woman on the phone was super aggressive and rude and insisted that only one «small» rice was included (this was not even small, it was extra small) and told me I had to pay $ 1.50 extra if I wanted any more rice. This was not written anywhere on Seamless, and what a stupid policy, how are you supposed enjoy curry without rice to eat it with?
What a shame, I may have ordered from there again, but for the woman’s complete rudeness over about 6 cents worth of white rice, now I will never order from there again and I hope they try not to be so stingy toward their customers in the future.

Really taste curries! Also, the basil fried rice is amazing. I think this is the best Thai option in FiDi, unfortunately, it’s only open for dinner…

I would give this place negative 5 stars if I could.
Wanting some pad thai to take out, I randomly walked into this place. Before going in, I checked their menu online for the price of the pad thai i wanted. And before I ordered I also checked their menu in store again. When my order was ready, they actually charged me extra for my food. When I confronted them, the woman who works there told me the menu is not updated, with an attitude like there was nothing wrong with that. Not only did I not get an apology, the woman just took my money and left me with my food. Not even a thank you for my ordering with them.
Being extremely irritated with the rudeness, I went home hoping the food would be better. To my dismay, it was the worst pad thai I had ever had. It was too greasy and sweet!
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, the workers were from China, not even real Thai chefs working there.

Ugh. Just… ugh, all around. Ordered via seamless, and the food (which arrived in a reasonable amount of time, probably 30 minutes, though they’re literally around the corner) had some major issues. I got the vegetable «fresh» roll and the noodle mao, which is essentially drunken noodles, with chicken. Whatever, the latter was passable, overly greasy and heavy on noodles and not much else, but I didn’t throw it away. But the veggie roll… note the scare quotes around fresh above. The roll consisted of a piece of carrot, some sad chopped lettuce, and an unidentifiable mushroom-​like substance that tasted of… nothing…all wrapped in what appeared to be the worst attempt at a tortilla ever. There was a gross sickly sweet tamarind sauce next to it. It was the oddest and least appealing thing I’ve considered eating in quite a while.
On top of that, in the four minutes it took me to ride 30 plus floors down to the ground and pick up the food, the delivery guy called me a second time after we’d already spoken, and left a loud but unintelligible message, presumably chastising me. This place needs a lot of work.

During one of those late nights at work, the hard-​working, career-​driven woman at work decides to order take-​out at Lemon Leaves. She logs onto her account at Seamless to put in an order of Chicken Pad Thai with banana & honey dessert. A Coke zero was also ordered as the choice of beverage.
Order came extremely quickly and the woman went down to get her order from the nice delivery boy.
Upon returning back at her desk, she opens up the banana & honey and gobbles it down in meer seconds. Delicious~~~crispy dough wrapped around soft bananas, drizzled heavily with liquidy honey.
Next, she opens up the Pad Thai. She mixes the item since there is a big pile of peanuts pieces on the top layer. Taking a bite of the Pad Thai, she was a bit disappointed to discover that the Pad Thai was extremely heavily seasoned with too much sauce, in which overwhelm the noodle and left a really sugary feeling behind in her throat.
She might try again another time, ordering a different item, but no one knows what the future can hold~~~~

True Rating: 3.5 stars
Ordered through seamless, so have no idea about the sit-​in details, and so the review is only for the food.
It was pretty decent thai food. We ordered a lot of stuff amongst us, so I can give you an end to end review. lol! Starters wise, calamari could be better, but I was impressed with the wings, and others like duck salad as well. Entrée wise, we covered Red Snapper (a whole damn fish. looked beautiful, and would be dangerous to see for the weak hearted!), Panang Curry, Pad Thai, some duck dish. and all were good!
I would say this is definitely a go ahead, and try from my side!

Oh Seamlessweb, you make my life so much easier when I cannot think properly to create a meal. After a late night at work, I ordered some vegetable dumplings and Noodle Mao, which is pretty much Drunken Noodle. Delivery was very quick, although I did have to call to see if they received my order. I received my confirmation email pretty much as soon as they called for me to pick up the food. The food was piping hot when it arrived and actually quite good. I was impressed. The noodles were a bit greasy, but not anymore so than any other Drunken Noodles that I’ve ever had. They were not spicy in the least bit, so it might be worthwhile to ask them to kick that up a notich. I would order from them again and try a basic curry — I find that’s the true test of a good Thai establishment.
3.5 stars overall.