I wasn’t planning to blog about my Downtown Raleigh Restaurant Week experience (even food bloggers sometimes want a break and just enjoy a meal), but our experience at Buku was so disappointing, I felt the need to. Because this entry wasn’t planned, there are no photographs.

After mulling over the 28 menus of Downtown Raleigh Restaurant Week, we settled on Buku. It had good variety and choices for both Greg and I to enjoy. We had been to Buku once before and it was okay, we didn’t love it, but it wasn’t so bad that we wouldn’t spend our hard-earned money there again. There were just always other places we would rather go to, if we were going to make the trek to downtown Raleigh.

We got one of everything on the Restaurant Week menu except for the Korean Mandu (neither of us are fans of kim chi) and the grouper. So we can’t comment on those two items of the menu, but if the rest of our meal was any indication, it’s pretty likely those dishes would be disappointing as well.

Appetizer: Oaxacan Tamales
Black mole, braised chicken, soft corn pastry

The tamales were fine, not fantastic, but not horrible. The mole sauce was a little gritty and the sliced radishes on topped were out of place and superfluous, but we were soon to learn the rest of the meal had way worse problems. On reflection, we should have been cautious ordering tamales wrapped in a “soft corn pastry” as opposed to “wrapped in masa.”

Main course: Mutter Paneer
Fried soft cheese, spiced tomato-chili sauce, lemon rice, pineapple raita, pickled vegetables, naan

First, “mutter” which literally translates into peas: There were maybe 2 dozen scattered around in the rice, but that gets zero credit since it’s supposed to be in the curry. If it was actually puree’d into the curry, there was no indication of peas, flavor-wise.  The paneer strips were cooked to a too-crisp sear.  The pineapple raita was a weird combination of pineapple, mint, and yogurt.  As one who loves both pineapple and mint, this combination didn’t work; the pineapple chunks had can-like uniformity, and were fairly ruined by the sour of the yogurt.  And lastly, the naan was more like sad sandwich flat bread with a perfectly circular odd smoosh in the center.  Needless to say, this dish was a disappointment.

Main course: South African BBQ
Grilled curried lamb skewers, biltong potato salad, lentil-apricot salad, caramelized butternut squash

Not really having thought about it, I didn’t request my lamb to be cooked medium rare, however the server also failed to ask me how I would like my lamb cooked. In any proper restaurant, lamb is usually cooked at most medium, but typically medium rare. These lamb chunks, although flavorful were very overcooked. The lamb was the least of my problems. The lentils in the lentil-apricot salad were undercooked and basically inedible. The even more disappointing accompaniment was the biltong potato salad. I have no idea what would have made it biltong, but it was as bland and uninteresting as potato salad from the deli counter at the grocery store. The surprising highlight of the dish was the caramelized butternut squash and the apricots on the lamb skewers.  Both gave pops of flavor and color to an otherwise flat plate of food.

Dessert: Cinnamon Churros
Crisp pastry, spiced dark chocolate, salted dulce de leche

Of the two desserts, the churros were by far the better choice. The churros weren’t bad, but if you ever had churros anywhere else you would be underwhelmed by these. They were slightly underdone and not quite as crispy as the churros should be. The dulce de leche sauce was the better of the two, as the chocolate sauce (despite a fine flavor) was way too runny to actually stick to the churro, inevitably making a mess.

Hawaiian Haupia
Coconut custard, macadamia, kiwi, roasted pineapple

This dessert was so bad we didn’t finish it. I don’t think we have ever not finished a dessert, so you know it was pretty bad. First of all, this was far from a custard, but rather tasted like gelatin was added to coconut milk to make a pie filling. Not only texturally was it weird, it didn’t really taste good. The coconut taste was so subtle it tasted like watered down coconut Jell-O. The crust that this awful filling sat on was equally bland. If you are going to have a bland pie filling, the crust should at least have some flavor to it. Other than the fresh pineapple on top (which wasn’t roasted at all), there was nothing redeeming about this dessert.

Honestly, as disappointing as it was, I wish we had spent our money and time trying Beasley’s Chicken and Honey instead.

Did you try Buku for Downtown Raleigh Restaurant Week? What did you think? Do you like Buku normally?

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