Address: 75 Ninth Ave, New York, NY 10011, USA

Telephone number: +1 212 989 6699

Website: www.buddakannyc.com

Date of visit: 10 October 2010

Price Guide : around $50 per head plus drinks

Comments on wine and beer: fairly extensive wine list. Be prepared to pay $50 plus for a reasonable bottle

Summary:

This is a chain that specialises in fusion food. My first encounter with the concept was in  Philadelphia.

The New York branch is located in a massive building on the Lower West Side. The ground  floor is well designed so that you don’t  get the over noisy atmosphere of a big open space. The basement is another matter. Here you have long communal tables (apparently, you can sit 34 round one of these tables) and benches in a vast open space.  In total we must be looking at 200 plus covers per sitting in this restaurant. However, the place has tables well spaced apart so it’s not too bad.

On the ground floor as we were led on a mazy walk round the building to a back room where our table was, you can’t help noticed as to how busy the place was. The decor is all modern red and black with very low level of lighting and non descriptive background music.

The menu offered starters – dim sum type dumplings – and main courses of meat, poultry, fish, noodles and rice. The wine list was longer than the menu with over 12 wines on offer by the glass at around $10.

We had 5 starters to share between us: cantonese spring roll , scallion pancakes , jade shrimp dumplings, wild mushroom Sui Mei and vegetable dumplings. The starters were priced at $11 or $12.

The Cantonese spring roll and the jade shrimp dumplings were close to the version that you would get in a normal Chinese restaurant with the “jade” being chopped greens.

The wild mushroom sui mei were open raviolis in a green pasta skin. The vegetable dumplings turned out to be orange – an infusion of tomatoes into the pastry. They were all very tasty. I especially like the crunchiness of the diced vegetables within the sui mei and dumplings. The scallion pancake was a different matter. It is like a crispy pizza with shredded dry spiced beef and chopped raw scallions on top. The taste was predominately spiced beef – it was very strange!

For main courses, we had shrimp and lobster chow fun ($35), ginger turbot ($29) and dungenese crab rice ($19). The shrimp and lobster chow fun came in a massive bowl but unfortunately, it was less than a third full. The ginger turbot was fillets of fish and crispy vegetables cut into diamond shape served on a piece of deep fried turbot skin. The crab rice was sticky rice and this was served in the shell of a crab. All three dishes were excellent.

The service was pretty good with the food arriving within 15 minutes after we ordered.

With a bottle of Hess Blend 2007 ($71), the total bill excluding service came to $230.81

I enjoyed the meal and the place. I would certainly recommend it as a place to meet up for big crowds..

E

Address: 40-44 Little Bourke St, Melbourne 3000,Victoria, Australia

Telephone number: +61 3 9671 3151

Website: www.longrain.com.au

Date of visit: 14 July 2010

Approximate cost per head: N/A

Comments on wine list/beer: N/A

Executive chef: Martin Boetz

Summary:

From business lunch to business dinner, only this time a little less formal, more like an after-work ‘beer and a bite’ catch-up instead of any deep and detailed discussions around strategy and tactics etc.

Thankfully the offices I am working in are centrally located, and downtown Melbourne offers the diner a smorgasboard of cuisine choices from pretty much anywhere on the planet. If anything there is a bias towards Asian/Pacific flavours with Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese among the more prolific. Tonight we opt for the popular and highly-rated Longrain, which describes itself as a contemporary Thai/Asian restaurant.

The ‘hip and welcoming’ restaurant fills a 100-year-old converted warehouse smack in the middle of Melbourne’s Chinatown. The space is expansive, with a large island bar surrounded by both long and circular communal tables intended to offer ‘banquet-style’ dining (their words not mine). Like many Asian restaurants, and also many other non-Asian restaurants in Melbourne, the emphasis here is on sharing, the intention being that you each order something different, then share the taste experience, ensuring a correct balance of hot, sour, salty and sweet flavours.

So what of the food? Starter choices were limited to just three: oysters, or two variations of betel leaf, one topped with smoked trout chilli roasted gallangal garlic and trout roe, or prawn peanuts mint and chilli paste. There were three of us dining and while one went for the trout, two went for the prawn. Wow! What an explosion of flavour on the palate. I chose the betel leaf with prawn, which was ‘gone in 60 seconds’ – a true taste sensation, and so good we immediately ordered another. At approx 4 GBP a mouthfull however we reluctantly declined the chance to order more.

Abiding by the sharing mantra, we each chose a different main dish, ending up with a fish, pork and duck combination, accompanied by rice, sticky long grain of course. Our dishes came out from the open-view kitchen in reverse order, beginning with a salad of braised duck with sweet fish sauce pomelo ginger and flat leaf coriander, shortly followed by twice-cooked suckling pig with squid ginger and chilli salad. All conversation stopped – this food was far too good to interrupt! Then came the fish, a red curry of ruby snapper with baby corn thai basil and fried shallots, the sticky rice proving an excellent sponge for the red curry sauce.

Judging by the lack of chat and the speed with which the plates were emptied, I concluded that my two dining partners had found the food as tasty and satisfying as myself. We took little persuading to carry on with a sampler plate of the restaurants sweet dishes, and boy were they sweet!

It’s the one thing about Asian cuisine, the desserts rarely match the breadth of flavours and textures that one typically enjoys in say a decent French or Italian eaterie. That doesn’t mean that what we were served in Longrain was disappointing, however you did need to like coconut (included in four of the six), and have a very very sweet tooth. In truth the puddings were fascinating creations, but to have included some sharpness or palate cleansing morsels would have been a better conclusion for me.

The meal was washed down with ice cold Kirin and Sapporo beer, and surprisingly for an Asian restaurant the coffee was beautifully roasted and rich.

Overall, a superb meal, innovative menu, beautifully presented food, with wonderful flavours, and very attentive but not over-the-top service. I would definitely recommend.

Paul Plant

Web site: www.kong.fr

Telephone number: France 0140390900

Date of visit: 12th March 2010

Approx. cost per head: €50

Comments on wine list/beer: good selection by glass

Media link:

Review:

We went for lunch without a reservation. The restaurant sits on the top floor of the building which overlooks the Seine at Pont Neuf.
The bar area was empty but the upstairs restaurant was fairly packed. However a table was found for us promptly.
The design of the restaurant, by Philippe Starck, competes with the spectacular views and even on an overcast day the latter wins.
The restaurant had a very modern, airy and light feel with the Starck staples: the Ghost chair, the gnomes etc.
We had the Kong plate (a selection of sashimi and satay – €29) to share for starters. The course was on the whole pretty good.
Our mains were miso cod and lobster udon. Both were done to perfection. 
Our main concern with this restaurant was the level of service. We had to remind the waiter of our drink order three times. One glass of wine arrived after the dish it was meant to accompany had already been consumed.
Lastly, we ordered a Pierre Herme dessert, which when it eventually arrived was well worth the wait.

Ken