Buddakan

Buddakan is a large pan-Asian restaurant at 75 Ninth Avenue in Chelsea, Manhattan, occupying a multi-level space within the Chelsea Market complex close to the Meatpacking District. Restaurateur Stephen Starr opened the New York location in March 2006, eight years after establishing the original Buddakan in Philadelphia. The approximately 16,000-square-foot restaurant was designed principally by French designer Christian Liaigre, with an interior intended to combine Asian influences with the grandeur of historic European architecture. At its centre is a dramatic double-height main dining hall dominated by a long communal table, large chandeliers and dark classical wood panelling, while surrounding spaces include smaller dining rooms, lounges and the Golden Library. The scale and theatrical character of the interior contrast sharply with the relatively discreet entrance on Ninth Avenue. Buddakan quickly became one of the most recognisable restaurants opened during the transformation of the Meatpacking District and Chelsea into major dining and nightlife areas during the 2000s.

Buddakan has appeared in Sex and the City (2008), in which the restaurant provides the setting for Carrie Bradshaw and John «Mr. Big» Preston’s wedding rehearsal dinner on the night before their planned ceremony at the New York Public Library. The production makes extensive use of the restaurant’s real interior, particularly its distinctive double-height main dining hall, while the entrance on Ninth Avenue is also used during an important confrontation immediately before the dinner.

In Sex and the City (2008), Carrie and Big gather with Charlotte, Miranda, Samantha and their friends and families at Buddakan for their wedding rehearsal dinner. The celebration takes place around the long communal table in the restaurant’s main hall, with the chandeliers, tall walls and upper gallery clearly visible around the party. Before joining the dinner, Miranda encounters Steve outside the restaurant. Their marriage is already in crisis after Steve has admitted sleeping with another woman, and when he once again asks Miranda to forgive him, she angrily refuses. Still upset when she returns inside, Miranda later finds herself alone with Big for a moment. Big admits that the scale of the wedding is making him nervous, and Miranda, speaking out of frustration over her own marriage, tells him that he and Carrie are crazy to get married and that marriage ruins everything. Her remark intensifies doubts Big is already struggling with and becomes one of the final triggers for his panic on the following morning, when he initially fails to enter the New York Public Library for the wedding. Because the rehearsal dinner occupies a substantial sequence rather than a brief establishing shot, Buddakan’s main dining room became one of the most recognisable restaurant locations associated with Sex and the City.

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