abaculus

Kintaro's store front

Oh Kintaro, the most famous ramen store in Vancouver—(in)famous also for its incredibly long lines. Expect the line to stream far out of the store during peak hours; people have been known to wait for an hour or more to get a seat in this little store.

And it is a small place—don’t come here expecting fancy decoration. There are only a few tables around which patrons sit together; it’s a ‘sit down, eat up, and get out’ sort of place when the lines are long, but it’s a great place to get a quick, good meal.

I was working downtown the other day and got off early, so decided to take my chance and grab a bowl of ramen while it was early afternoon. As I expected, there were only a couple of people in line in front of me, and it wasn’t long before I had a seat at the kitchen bar.

Say hello to my promptly-served cheese ramen:

Cheese ramen

I ordered this because my brother swears he’s taken me to Kintaro for cheese ramen years ago when I was visiting him, but I can’t remember it, so thought I should try it again. I was actually a little taken aback by the portions—for about $1 or $2 more than Benkei, you get literally twice the amount of food. The bowls are huge and that heaping amount of cheese really does border on the obscene. Definitely not for the health-conscious eater.

The cheese itself (once you get over the amount) is quite decent: it melts in the steaming soup quickly, so you get to eat cheese strings along with your ramen, and adds a sort of milky flavour to an already delicious broth without overwhelming it. The pork slices were also quite tasty, and I liked the noodles better than the ones they serve in Benkei. Heck, I like the whole thing more than Benkei, and for the price you get those portions at? A far better deal and one worth returning for.

And most importantly? I found out that bamboo does not have to stink! The bamboo shoots at Kintaro are perfectly unobjectionable in smell and were also sweet-tasting, which added to my joy of rediscovering decent bamboo.

The cheese really was too much, however, and I ended up not eating all of it. I don’t think I’ll ever have this particular ramen again, but I will definitely drop by to try some other flavours the next time there’s hardly anyone in line.

At least I finally satisfied my ramen craving!

Kintaro Ramen
788 Denman St
Vancouver BC

(No credit cards)

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

was lit up with a thousand thousand crescent moons
cascading down the inky sky in a glittering rain

of fire

–

For a moment in the afternoon, a peal of thunder rolled through the sky and rain started pouring down. I got a call from my brother who’d gone up to English Bay with his friends to warn me that people were leaving the beach and I should bring a towel and an umbrella.

Fortunately, it stopped before my friend came round to give me a ride to Kitsilano Beach, where we’d agreed to go watch the last display of fireworks for the Celebration of Light, an annual international competition among four countries that takes place each summer in Vancouver; last night was a tribute to China. The view from Kits isn’t the same as English Bay, where the lights seem to be bursting right above your head, but it wasn’t bad (barring the giant Totoro-shaped tree-bush that blocked our view of the lower fireworks).

Although nobody else I know who went thinks so, the last multiple burst of unfurling fireworks looked like a giant, golden heart—which isn’t too impossible a premise, given that the theme of the show was The Butterfly Lovers…

At lillienne dot wordpress dot com, where I’ll be blogging on my fourth-year adventures from now on.

(In the back of my head: fourth year already?!)