Buddha's Belly

Santa Monica has a plethora of shopping at the 3rd street promenade. You could spend hours just walking around. Well, we actually did do that, and so we got famished. There's tons of places to eat too, but as I've said before, I'm terribly indecisive. Well, eventually after walking round and round, we happened upon Buddha's Belly. It was a good thing too, because I was going to fall down from hunger.
It's a pretty cute place, cleanly decorated. Dark wood in the booths and the tables, with a smattering of really soothing colors. I guess it's considered an asian restaurant. It's got a mix of japanese, thai, chinese cuisines, just basically taking the best and most popular from each cuisine.
We started with some chicken lettuce wraps. J had never had these before. He'd only just gone to PF Chang's for the first time a few weeks ago, and he's never been to the Cheesecake Factory, so this was his first foray into lettuce wraps. I liked that this particular dish had jicama in it, and the little fried crunchy bits too. And guess what, he liked it! J ordered the japanese noodle set with veggie and shrimp tempura. That's an extremely long drawn out way of saying tempura udon. His first time having anything like this, and he enjoyed it. They make pretty good food here, and their presentation is also nice.
I'd been hankering for some ramen lately, and not from a packet, so that's what I went with. The spinach ramen noodle, with spinach noodles (they're green!) and a bunch of other stuff in a spicy miso broth. I didn't think the broth would be spicy but it was, but in a good way. I liked this very much. I was surprised.

Service was good, but it took our waiter forever to come by and see us the very first time. But after that, it was smooth sailing. The waiter was funny though, not because he was trying. He was just a weird dude that talked strangely. And he was freakishly tall.