Benkei Ramen
1741 Robson St
Vancouver, BC V6G
I have a long love-hate relationship with ramen. In my childhood, whenever there was no time to make a full meal, (Nissin) ramen was the backup plan. When I moved here, I started to eat other type of foods so, in a way, ramen fell down to a second plane. It wasn’t until I moved out of Downtown Vancouver that I notice all the ramen shops there: Kintaro (actually, I am aware of), Motomachi Shokudo and Benkei Ramen. The problem with these places is that they are so popular, they usually have a queue; and who knows how long it may take for you to secure a table (or a seat at the bar if you are on your own, as I usually am).
Last week, during the Pride Parade, I noticed Benkei Ramen was empty, it was noon and haven’t had lunch yet… Their menu is quite straight forward: The ramen plus several broth types, some small dishes and drinks. In my case, I ordered the tonkatsu (comes with chasu pork) with all toppings, which includes corn (?!), green onions, kimchi (?!), nappa cabbage, half-egg, tofu among other things.
I had a small problem with the camera here so, unfortunately, could not manage to get a good picutre… But, what about the ramen itself? Well, in a way, I had high expectations. I mean, this is supposed to be real-stuff, right? (OK, real-stuff outside of Japan). I will have to say I was disappointed. The broth was good but did not blew me. The ramen… It was just a *small* upgrade from Nissin ramen. As for the toppings, it was OK. At first, some toppings (like kimchi) seemed to throws thing off but after the second bite, it mingled quite well. However, the corn threw it off a bit in an odd way: while the rest of the dish was savoury (or neutral, like the tofu), the corn was sweet. I notice another odd thing: the ratio of noodles and bean sprouts was almost 1:1. A small problem I had was that the pork was not in the bowl itself; they forgot to put it in and was given to me in a separate plate. And that was the biggest disappointment: I think I have done better roasted pork.
The whole dish was around $10.50 (pre-tax). As mentioned above, I had high expectations and I felt Benkei did not deliver. Next time I will try the other ramen places and will give another assessment.
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