Posh Lunch Monday: Buddakan

Posted: April 14th, 2009 | Author: Bone | Filed under: Food, Philadelphia |

I really question whether I can justify these as ‘posh’ lunches when the whole thing comes to about £17 including drink, taxes & tip, but still, they are nice places to go for lunch which would be more expensive at dinner, though the menu didn’t look too painful wallet-wise had I strayed from the bargain-lunch bento option. Today I went to Budakkan down in Philly’s Old City area, which is another of Stephen Starr’s restaurants in the city, and it does generally asian food, they seem to grab from the whole continent and give some dishes a bit of an American twist, so don’t let the giant buddha make you think the dishes hail from a specific region (also, I’ve seen bigger buddha, kind of).

You got to pick three items off a list of about 15 dishes, which were split into groups of 5 categorised vaguely by whether they were an appetiser/salad/meat if you were to order the ‘full size’ dish off the main menu. If you picked one from each group it was $15, but you could also pick three from the same group for $20, which would probably make the most sense for carnivores. I decided to go with the more economical option, and ordered a Kirin Light beer, which at $5.75 wasn’t too expensive considering it was imported, and I was in a nice place.

The first item I ordered was a Kobe beef slider. Sliders seem to be popular in America, I think it’s because people can convince themselves that it’s okay to eat 4 of them, Burger King even call theirs ’shots’, as if there’s going to be people in BKs stood at the counter shouting “hit me!” for another hit of beef. However, to mention this slider in the same breath as a BK burger shot would probably do it a dis-service (I presume, I haven’t downed a ’shot’ yet). To start with, it was Kobe beef, which I hadn’t tried before (unless I unwittingly did in Japan), secondly, it was a brioche bun, and thirdly, there was a vaguely wasabi-ish relish. It was pretty amazing, if I ever went back for a meal I’d probably order them as a full appetiser (hopefully you’d get more than one). A couple of girls that got a table near me both ordered the Kobe slider as part of their bento lunch too, so they must be a popular item.

The next dish in the line was sesame crusted seared tuna. It was really good, but it was swimming in soy sauce a bit after the soy drained off the salad.

I wish I could have poured some of the extra soy onto my rice, because it was really boring. I guess it’s silly to expect a lot of any rice that has celery in it, but by the end I was basically eating this because I’d paid for it, and because I knew it would fill me up. At least you got a decent sized portion, but it lacked flavour in a big way.

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