Fused

The trend of fusion food is nothing new. There are probably more fusion-esque restaurants in New York than there are traditional cuisine restaurants at the moment. Okay... maybe not, but the point is-- there are a lot. Topping the list are probably French-Japanese, Nuevo-Mexican/Italian/Spanish, and your offering of various tapas joints. Most of these places take traditional food and make it more glam. Like Dos Caminos, somehow they take tacos and put Kobe steak inside and its way more fab than your average ground beef.

The other offering that has become more and more popular is dumplings. Dumplings of different sorts are popping up everywhere. (Is this a trend I only see? or umm do others see it too?) So you have the normal Japanese sui mei, the Chinese dumpling, etc. Now you go to Stanton Social and you have the French Onion Soup Dumpling. Who thought to put the soup inside the dumpling rather than the dumpling in the soup? (and add cheese!) It's genius!

Now cut to Buddakan deemed "Modern Asian Cuisine." They have a variety of dumplings and sui mei on their menu ranging from butternut squash dumplings to general tso's dumplings, but the one that everyone seems to talk about is the edamame dumplings. What Buddakan was able to do was take traditional dumplings and add something not so traditional i.e. edamame. But in the process, they've created a new fusion which I call Japa-polish. You see, when the edamaeme is pureed, it tastes very much like potato. And everyone knows that when you put potato inside a pasta shell you have a pierogi (or gnocchi if smaller, but that’s not the argument here). So you see Buddakan has actually went to a place no one has ever gone before (even though they probably have zero clue they've done it) they've taken a highly popular cuisine (Japanese) and fused it with a cuisine... well... that’s not on the forefront of the culinary arts (Polish). And let me add, it tastes wonderful. My one issue with this is the plate comes with an uneven number of dumplings--who wants to be the asshole to take the fifth one? When it tastes as good as this... what the hell-- I'll be!