Mission Chinese Founder Takes Surprise Gig at Buddakan
Nearly two decades after pan-Asian clubstaurant Buddakan made its flashy Meatpacking District debut, Starr Restaurant Group is turning to a big-name chef to reinvent it.
Mega-restaurateur Stephen Starr tapped Danny Bowien, of Mission Chinese Food fame, 'to revitalize the menu at Buddakan and give it a fresh look,' a Starr rep tells Eater. The team declined to say whether Bowien is a newly named co-owner or partner, as 'it's still in extremely early development stages.' The Substack Feed Me first flagged Bowien's incoming involvement this week.
Bowien is best known for his San Francisco-born smash hit Mission Chinese, which expanded to New York in 2012 to instant acclaim. Subsequent locations followed on the Lower East Side and Bushwick. The restaurant group's reputation took a turn after employees repeatedly alleged a range of misconduct at the LES location, including racial discrimination as well as physical and verbal abuse. In 2022, Mission Chinese pulled out of NY completely.
Bowien's neon-lit millennial magnet made a surprise NY comeback last spring, this time in the heart of Chinatown, as a nighttime residency inside Cha Kee (43 Mott Street, at Bayard Street). What started as a pop-up is now a permanent operation, complete with longstanding Mission Chinese favorites like chile-blasted Chongqing chicken wings, kung pao pastrami, and other inventive takes on Sichuan cuisine through his Chinese American lens. The 15-year-old original in San Francisco's Mission District is still open today (though under new ownership).
It remains unclear how Bowien plans to zhuzh Buddakan's existing menu full of dim sum, sizzling short ribs, and Beijing duck. Choosing to align with a cash-cow conglomerate of a company like Starr is relatively surprising, considering Bowien's keep-it-tight approach to the restaurant world. Like Mission Chinese, Buddakan has also dealt with past allegations of discrimination and a toxic work culture.
Starting as a single location in Philadelphia in 1988, Buddakan grew into a mini empire at its height, with locations in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. The Meatpacking District location opened in 2006 and, backed by an early two-star review from the New York Times , was an immediate hit. In Manhattan at that time, Buddakan was 'a hipper, younger, clubbier analogue to older, expensive, white tablecloth venues,' former Eater critic Ryan Sutton wrote in a 2015 review. See More: Coming Attractions
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