Buddakan Philadelphia

Food excellent, service excellent. They truly looked at the Open Table reservation and were ready for us and even had the chair removed so I could just slide up in my wheelchair.

We were there celebrating two birthdays. Our server Faith was wonderful. She was attentive without being intrusive and knowledgeable about the menu. We were a table of 6 and ordered quite a bit of food, some of which was great and others lackluster. The bao buns were great and the small calamari salad was huge and those who had it said delicious. The spareribs were good as well as the edamame dumplings, although the way those were served made it hard to fully enjoy. Each dumpling should be on a individual type spoon so you can enjoy the soup part as well as the dumpling. The way they were served in one large bowl with only one spoon made it so the soup part is left at the bottom. I did request extra spoons from the expediter but they never came. The worst part of our appetizer course was somehow an item was switched to another in the computer and served to us. It had shellfish in it and that wasn’t known when someone at our table who doesn’t eat shellfish ate it. The sashimi was good but the tuna tartare thing was really bad. The entrees we had were the duck, which I was told was delicious, the miso cod, which was fishy, the whole fish which was tasteless, the lobster fried rice, which was okay but lacking flavor. The best dish was the black pepper beef, it was delicious and elegantly served. We had all the sides and all were quite good especially the eggplant and the wasabi mashed potatoes. It was a nice evening but it felt a little stale for a Starr restaurant.

I went for the Siamese salmon and they said they ran out at lunch time. The server was busy outside taking pictures and left us waiting for our food. I will not be back.

I would have given 5 stars if it hadn’t been for the noise level, which was off the charts. You could not have a conversation with the person across the table. For that reason I wouldn’t go back. The food and service, however was very good. I was there during restaurant week and it was very busy. Maybe it’s not usually that noisy?

Food was amazing. Beautifully presented. The waiter couldn’t have been kinder or more attentive.