This is a better than average suburban Chinese restaurant featuring well prepared somewhat Americanized standard dishes. Good service, nice decor, quiet dining room, modest prices. We have dined there five or six times, all satisfactory experiences.

For intensely authentic Sichuan, we head a couple of miles west to Sichuan Gourmet.

For more creative and refined but pricer food that may appeal to American tastes, we head a few miles east to CK Shanghai.

For dim sum and Cantonese/Hong Kong specialties, we head into Chinatown to China Pearl.

But if you are in the Natick-Framingham area looking for decent Chinese food on a budget, Lotus Flower is a good choice. I would award 3 1/2 stars if that category were available, but have bumped this up for the value.