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“Buddakan”

Occasion:	Cuisine:	Area:	Cost:	Rating:
Night Out	Asian	Chelsea	Moderate	Great

bage, indeed, a dish that might have been born if my Jewish grandmother had hooked up with a nice man from Shao Xing. Schulson fills delicate cabbage leaves with steamed sweet-fleshed bass and drops the tightly wrapped bundles in an aromatic scallion, ginger and soy broth. The chilled udon were also fabulous—long pudgy noodles tossed with fresh lime segments and a light peanut sauce ($10).

Vegetable sides should not be overlooked. We shared a few sides that were great: a spectacular bowl of sweet and sour baby eggplant ($7) tossed with some of that dried pineapple from the tofu, a plate of water spinach ($7), very simple but very nice. But the Kimchee cauliflower ($6) was sad. It needs some attention in the form larger pieces of cauliflower (it was practically like confetti), and of a lot more kimchee (it was bland). Hey, it was nice to finally find something wrong with the place.

Pastry chef Daniel Skurnick, who worked with Johnny Iuzzini at Jean Georges, has got some juice. I liked his desserts (all $10) quite a bit, especially the Kaffir lime tart ($10), a sort of lemon curd tart on acid served with several other lively and lovely expressions of lemon—a steamed yuzu souflee and a lemon custard ice cream. He’s got two chocolate desserts on the menu—one he calls a “Crying Chocolate”—a molten cake with malted white chocolate ganache, coffee ice cream and milk caramel, and another chocolate sandwich filled with a layer of sliced bananas and a top layer of thick dark chocolate mousse, with a side of spiced chocolate ice cream. But my favorite dessert is one that is the most basic: two generous scoops of summery sorbet—blood orange and ginger lemongrass—in a cool pool of kalamansi (think lime crossed with a tangerine) seltzer swimming with sweet juicy filets of blood oranges and ruby red grapefruit. It’s like jumping into a cold lake on a sticky August afternoon.

The thing is People, Buddakan did not just impress me with its food. And it did not just win me over with its utterly magnificent design. And while the chefs are very sexy, that’s just gravy. These are the things that most impressed me: The restaurant, which seats 270, turns out between 400 and 800 covers a night depending on the day of the week. That the kitchen turns out this volume of food with such fine and consistent results is no small feat. In all seriousness, hot or not, chef Michael Schulson ... [more, click below]

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Posted: April 3, 2006

Other restaurants in Chelsea :
+ Matsuri   + La Bottega   + Tia Pol   + Bombay Talkie   + Cookshop   + D'Or Ahn: THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED   + Buddakan   + Crema   + InTent: THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED   + Trestle on Tenth   + Klee   + El Quinto Pino   + Socarrat   + Txikito   + Co. (Company)   

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