The Smokin' Buddha

A menu that runs from Pad Thai and Thai Peanut Curry through Bulgogi Bowl, Tonkotsu Ramen, Chana Masala, and Nasi Goreng usually belongs to a food court. The Smokin' Buddha runs all of it from a single kitchen in Port Colborne's old train-station building and treats each line as comfort food rather than as a fusion checklist. The restaurant opened on King Street in October 2007, set into the causeway space at the eastern edge of the Canal District. Kevin Echlin and Kyla Pennie, credited as the founders in local coverage, built the kitchen around travel they had done through Southeast Asia — an origin that still tracks across the menu.

The order is mostly bowls and starters. Pad Thai arrives as tamarind noodles with tempeh, egg, peanuts, bean sprouts, and cilantro — the safe first move, but the sweet-sour balance shows the kitchen's edge. Thai Peanut Curry runs sweet peppers and peanuts through coconut milk over rice. The Bulgogi Bowl plates sesame beef, chicken, or tempeh over rice with cucumber, carrots, green onion, ginger, garlic, and soy. The ramen lane carries Tonkotsu, Barbacoa, Tokyo Shoyu, and Udon Soup; the curry lane carries Butter Chicken, Katsu Curry, Vindaloo, Chana Masala, and Tropical Shrimp Curry. Pork Gyoza, Duck Spring Rolls, Bangkok Fish Cakes, Crab Rangoon Dip, and a Mango Salad open the meal, and a Jerk Chicken Bowl, a Chimichanga, and a Naan Pizza sit further down the list as the cross-cuisine outliers.

The breadth could read as fusion theatre but does not, because every line on the menu is shaped like a comfort dish — bowl, curry, noodle plate, rice plate, dumpling, salad. Vegetarian diners run through the same main menu as everyone else: Chana Masala, Thai Peanut Curry, Korean Noodles, Mango Salad, and tempeh paths across the protein options. The kitchen does not move "what to order if you don't eat meat" into a smaller separate section. Food Network Canada featured the dining room on an early episode of You Gotta Eat Here, and the segment named peanut curry, Korean beef noodles, lamb pops, and mango salad among the dishes chosen for camera. That attention helped, but the menu itself is what carried the restaurant forward — a group can disagree about cuisine and still find one ordering page that handles every voice at the table.

Kevin Echlin and Kyla Pennie are named as the founders in local coverage of the original opening, and the travel-origin story is part of what that coverage recorded — a stretch of teaching and eating across Southeast Asia that found its way back to Port Colborne as a menu. The choice of building mattered: the address sits inside the old train-station causeway off King Street, with exposed brick, salvaged wood, and a wall of vintage maps that read as the founders' notebook turned into décor. The current chef line stays out of public copy — recent coverage has not produced two independent current sources — but the founder-and-travel posture is the one Kevin and Kyla built the kitchen around in 2007, and the Southeast Asia notebook is still where the menu starts.

The dining room runs Tuesday through Saturday, with King Street on one side and the canal on the other, and the working logic of the place is breadth rather than depth in any one cuisine. A weeknight pickup order through the online ordering page tends toward Pad Thai, a Bulgogi Bowl, Pork Gyoza, and a curry that travels well; a dine-in night spreads further into spring rolls, Bangkok Fish Cakes, ramen, and a shared rice-and-curry plate. A short drink list runs alongside, with beer and wine that handles the cuisine spread without trying to compete with it. Pricing sits in casual-dinner range, and what the restaurant offers in exchange is meal utility — a Canal District kitchen that can answer almost any version of what the table wants tonight.