Buddha Bruddah

About Buddha Bruddah

Run by husband-and-wife duo Drea and Mark Mizer, Buddha Bruddah has been in business for five years, though its brick-and-mortar location opened in 2017. They started out as a food truck, serving up their “Asian mixed plates” — a new spin on the traditional Hawaiian plate lunch — across the city before they outgrew the truck’s commissary kitchen and found the perfect spot on Rainier to settle down.

In everything from its name to its mixed-plate specialties, Buddha Bruddah pays homage to Mark’s heritage and bringing together cultures through food. Half-white and half-Thai, Mark was a minority growing up in Kirkland — but he felt right at home on his frequent childhood visits to Hawaii, where the mixed plate was born out of sugarcane workers from across the world sharing their cuisines with one another. The food truck sprang from a desire to honor his mother’s history and talent: she owned one of the very first Thai restaurants in Seattle in the early 80s. Mark was planning to open a food truck with her — he’d even bought a used taco truck in Phoenix and driven it up to Seattle and begun remodeling it — when she passed away unexpectedly.

About a year after her death, Drea was laid off from her job in the mortgage industry — and that’s when the pair decided to put the food truck sitting in their driveway to use and launch Buddha Bruddah themselves. Their Asian fusion food has a heavy Thai-Hawaiian influence, and they focus on fresh ingredients, innovative approaches to cuisine, and making absolutely everything from scratch.

Drea says she and Mark are excited to continue with Plate of Nations this year because “it’s a great opportunity to showcase the neighborhood, and expose people from outside the area to Mt. Baker and Rainier Valley. Plate of Nations represents different cultures coming together — and that’s what our neighborhood is all about.” She says their goal when they looked for a restaurant space was to add value to the neighborhood — and that means bringing community together around mixed plates and mixed cultures.