Forty five minutes after exiting Temple tube station, I am still wandering around the area. I could have sworn I have walked past Buddha bar before – which faces the river – but for the life of me, all I can see is a Walkabout. Defying pride, I finally make the call to the restaurant for directions; they tell me I need to keep walking right, and then some.

Ah, there it is, under a bridge.

At first I thought the PR bods were sending me to a cocktail bar for a round of drinks, even Buddha Bar’s website suggests a sort of lounge with a kitchen attached to it. My assumptions were only solidified upon entry – Loud, dark, body hugging waitress outfits and a cloakroom. The reception area is very cosy, probably suggesting an equally cosy restaurant.

And then I see this guy:

The music got louder and louder as I passed through to the dining area – everything I had thought Buddha bar was, well it wasn’t. The high ceilings looked at least a couple of storeys high, and it was dominated by a huge golden Buddha washed in dim blue and red light. My eyes continually scanned the room, it looked like as if the tea house stage built for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had been converted into a club with the dance floor populated by tables. As my senses became saturated with the setting, I let out a silent ‘wow’, this place looks amazing.

For such a huge restaurant, they sure skimmed on the furniture and fittings. The tables were ridiculously small as it seemed to only just fit two menus. Flipping through it, I could barely see a thing. The light was terrible, so bad that the waitresses carried around mini torch lights while they navigated the dark like ushers in a cinema. Some diners were handed these mini torch lights, while I illuminated mine with an iPhone. I enjoyed the chill-out tracks oozing out from the ultra bass speakers but when I have to shout at my partner when ordering, that’s not usually a good sign for a restaurant. Our waitress brings around a bowl of edamame beans seasoned in salt and chilli – not bad. I ask for some water – leaning over – she still can’t hear me. Sigh, I shout louder. At this point, I can’t seem to take Buddha Bar seriously as a restaurant, the ambiance was becoming a distraction, and I couldn’t concentrate on my appetite, at all. In my mind, it’s still a cocktail lounge with a kitchen attached to it. Speaking of food, the menu is just about as confusing. They describe themselves as serving ‘Pan-Asian’ cuisine, which translates to sushi for starters and Thai for mains. Glancing at the menu prices which I could see, I was squinting to read it again as the prices seemed a little exorbitant.

The taster menu was available for £65 per person – equivalent to Michelin prices. I get the feeling that food is meant to be shared, everything is doubly pricy. Anyway, the sushi menu looked quite so formidable with a wide selection of traditional nigiris and sashimis, as well as a small selection of sushi rolls. Nothing in the hot starters section caught my eye, and so our meal began with a sushi selection.

The waitress seemed very proud of the toro (Belly tuna, the top of the list of sushi, and the most expensive at £4.50 per piece), she exclaimed that it was an item rarely available as their chefs only serve it when they get stock that was of high enough quality. I asked for two, she strongly recommended six and we settled with four. Accompanying the toro were turbot, unagi, seared lobster and wasabi tempura prawn roll. I also ordered scallop which never came and I believe that was drowned out by the music. As this meal was free, I didn’t really want to take the mickey and order too much. The sushi is terribly pricy, this platter had already clocked in at nearly £45.

I started with the wasabi prawns – not bad at all, a creamy wasabi mayo, the tempura was a powdery crunch and the rice had good stickiness. My mouth was beginning to water. Next up, the prized toro …. Ok, wow. It was surprisingly amazing. It disintegrated in my mouth, the quality of the fish was superb, oily, fatty, odourless; the toro was an absolute beauty that was cut to perfection. The rest of the platter gave the similar melt in your mouthness, the unagi was loaded with sweet soya flavours, the turbot was another smooth silk layered on rice and the seared lobster roll required eyebrows to be raised. I found myself nodding along, I almost don’t want to admit it, partly because I didn’t expect food to taste half as good, but also partly because I couldn’t see what I was eating; but dude….. that was one of the best sushi platters I’ve ever had in London. One expensive sushi platter, if for some reason my conscience hadn’t kicked in, I probably would have ordered eight more pieces of toro.

After the startlingly good sushi, I was really looking forward to what they could achieve with the cooking. Service was a little slow, we waited about half an hour before the food started showing up. Mains were roast black cod in sweet miso (£23.50), Beef fillet teppanyaki (£30) and crispy baby squid (£11) accompanied by egg fried rice and rice noodles.

Let’s start with the squid – yeah it wasn’t too bad, a little heavy on the salt, but overall good crispiness and flavour. The fillet of beef was so-so. Overpriced, overcooked and mushy. It came with an under fermented kimchi, there’s abit of mango flavour in the sweet sauce as well, where I expected sizzling smokiness (as it was advertised as a teppanyaki), I was greeted with a uninspired pan-fried dish. Ordinary at best. The black cod miso (£23.50) is a little cheaper than the Nobu original (£28). It looks nearly identical save for the drops of sweet miso on the side. Yeah, initial impressions exhibited the signature melt in your mouth flakiness with the deep miso flavours, grainy texture with just the hint of acidity. The fish was cooked well – just a tad under – I could still taste the fatty bits so that’s good. Its missing abit of the magic, a good imitation but an imitation nonetheless. Not as clinical as the original, the sauce is over smothered in my opinion, a tad too sweet, too intense and I think the fish needs abit more broiling. Close but no cigar. The side dishes were the dark horse – the egg fried rice was full flavoured and came with delicious large shrimps (lots of them) and the rice noodles were bouncilicious. The noodles were so consistent that the strands were impossibly long and hard to break – a good sign.

Um, yeah so just when I was about to take Buddha Bar seriously, the main courses let me down abit. Don’t get me wrong though, the mains actually tasted ok, there were no missteps or basic errors, fish tasted like fish and so forth, but it wasn’t anything spectacular, unlike the sushi. Although, I’ll note that the portions were deceptively large, we failed to finish everything on the table. On the whole, being mindful of how expensive this meal could be, I thought it was above average.

With food finally out of the way, I began to take in the rest of the unorthodox ambiance, its like a club where people are boogieing sitting down. I realised that the price premium wasn’t for the food, but it was most definitely for everything else. Buddha Bar is a swanky place to celebrate a special occasion, or more appropriately, it’s the swanky place to wow your first date. The darkness, loud chillout music and matrix-like atmosphere is the perfect distraction to hide first date jitters. Food is passable albeit overpriced; I would recommend sticking to working up the liquid courage and the sushi for food. Embrace the suggestive energy, feel free to be somebody else and really just have a blast. Inside Buddha Bar, everyone is leaning over to whisper something, and if you want to make that move, all I’m saying is that the stage is already set and you should lean over and make that move.

PS: Full set of photographs can be seen on flickr.

The Gist of It

Buddha Bar official site
£80 per person plus drinks
8 Victoria Embankment
WC2R 2AB
Tel: 020 3371 7777
Tube: Temple (and keep walking right till you see the bridge)

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