Close enough to work for me to dash in and out during my lunch break, and at $7 a bowl, Benkei on Thurlow seemed like a good way of satisfying my ramen craving that had been plaguing me for a month and a half.
Unfortunately, the entire experience was underwhelming. Both times. (I went twice, just to be sure.)
Shoyu ramen
My first ramen was the shoyu ramen, a soy-sauce-based ramen with nori (seaweed), bamboo shoots, spinach, and sliced pork. Nothing was bad, mind you—the noodles were alright, the pork was alright, the soup was alright… and that’s just it. Everything was only alright, with no outstanding features to make me want to come back again.
(Except the bamboo. That was outstanding in a shockingly pungent way and stayed at the furthest curve of my bowl at all times.)
Unwilling to write Benkei off entirely based on one mediocre expeirence, I returned the next week, my ramen craving still very much present. (Also, I had a shiny new stamp card with a shiny new stamp that promised me a free ramen after acquiring eight more stamps. Now that is incentive.) This time, I had the shio ramen, a salt-based ramen boiled with pork that is lighter in flavour to the shoyu ramen.
Shio ramen with sliced pork, green onions, bean sprouts, and... bamboo shoots
Although I came in with low expectations, the shio ramen managed to succeed in disappointing me regardless. Despite thinking very carefully of what could be said for it, the only thing I could concentrate on was how Benkei’s odourous bamboo from last time wasn’t just a one-off experience. Again, the bamboo stayed at the furthest side of my bowl.
Conclusion? I am never going back there again, not even for the sake of my shiny stamp card with two stamps on it, if only to avoid the bamboo. This olfactory experience incited a crisis in my own culinary heritage as I could not remember if bamboo had ever been that smelly before. I certainly hadn’t been expecting it, but perhaps I’m losing my memory in my tender twenties? (Fortunately, I recently reconfirmed that bamboo shoots do not have to smell like that. Whew.)
Benkei Ramen
747 Thurlow St
Vancouver BC
