Unfortunately for me @pmarflee's answer does not work. I've found another solution corresponding to MSDN:
The date part must have the format: YYYY-MM-DD, where YYYY is a four
digit year value between 0001 and 9999, MM is the month between 1 and
12 and DD is the day value that is valid for the given month MM.
The time part must have the format: HH:MM[:SS[.fffffff]], where HH is
the hour value between 0 and 23, MM is the minute value between 0 and
59, SS is the second value between 0 and 59 and fffffff is the
fractional second value between 0 and 9999999. All value ranges are
inclusive. Fractional seconds are optional. Seconds are optional
unless fractional seconds are specified; in this case, seconds are
required. When seconds or fractional seconds are not specified, the
default value of zero will be used instead.
There can be any number of spaces between the DATETIME symbol and the
literal payload, but no new lines.
DATETIME'2006-10-1 23:11'
DATETIME'2006-12-25 01:01:00.0000000' --
same as DATETIME'2006-12-25 01:01'
And code itself:
DateTime dateTimeValue = DateTime.Now;
// ESQL DATETIME format MUST be <yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm> format
_Query = _Query.Where(string.Format("(it.StartDate >= DATETIME'{0:yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm}')",dateTimeValue);