It’s a hot and sunny day, so guess what Bao was craving?! Yes, you got it.. Ramen!! We headed over to Benkei Ramen on broadway for dinner, I guess ramen places are popping up everywhere nowadays! I’m glad there’s ramen places not situated in the downtown core.
Benkei Ramen
545 West Broadway, Vancouver BC
Tel#: (604) 568-6178
Alright, I came here expecting to sweat while eating my bowl of ramen! I even thought about ordering cold noodles to fend off sweating bullets, but once we walked in there, I felt a breeze of cold air. YES! Air conditioning! I was ecstatic, and happily took a seat at the communal table in anticipation for a bowl of ramen.
Perhaps I had some high hopes, but I had just had a bowl from Benkei on Thurlow and was satisfied with it. This bowl was less than satisfying. The broth was far too light and lacked any flavour. I ended up dousing my bowl with seasoning in order to salvage this. The ramen was nicely cooked, but I barely noticed this as I kept wishing there was more flavour to the soup.
Overall besides the a/c, I did not enjoy my bowl of ramen here. Maybe it was just an off-day, but there’s too many other ramen places around to make me want to revisit here again.
Post by Colleen
It is odd you mention you had an off day: supposedly, for consistency sake, instead of having individual kitchens, each one preparing their own broth, it is prepared centrally in their location near Main and 5th Ave and then distributed to the other ones. In other words: if they had an off day, it won’t be in one location only. It would have been in ALL locations!
BTW, a friend of mine loves Benkei and he goes to the Robson location at least once every other week (if not every week). However, no matter what, he asks for the chopped garlic and add several spoonfuls to “liven up the broth”. I thought it was overkill but, for testing sake, I did that once and… Well, it was an interesting experience. Thankfully, didn’t have meetings later that day, hahaha!
Hey KimHo:)
Ohhh interesting fact! Thanks for letting me know 🙂 You’re right, it probably wasn’t an off day, Marv ‘n I tried another Benkei location and didn’t enjoy it either. lol Chopped garlic?? Sounds like it was super strong…did it help your broth much?
Have you tried Motomachi? We recently gave it a visit and found it to be pretty good! Probably our favourite so far 🙂
Garlic was “strong enough”. You couldn’t taste that “spiciness” associated with raw garlic but you knew it was there. As for the favour profile, yes, it did indeed changed it. However, that’s the nature of garlic!
Have tried Motomachi. It is good (or bad) depending on what you look for in a broth. In my case, I was looking for a heavy, strong flavoured pork broth. Alas, Motomachi ain’t the place that serves that; instead, they are a bit more “healthy”. Santouka does the job – if it wasn’t that expensive compared to the other ones!
i usually get my fix at benkei when i’m not sweating at kintaro! bonus is that they have stamp cards! buy 10 bowls and get 1 free, or something to that extent 🙂