Ramen Week: Benkei Ramen

The next stop on my week-long trek through Vancouver’s ramen shops (tune in tomorrow!) was Benkei Ramen. They have a number of locations, but Broadway is usually the most convenient for me at lunchtime, so that’s where we ended up.

It was packed, so we waited a few minutes (during which time we were prompted to order ahead to speed up the process) and picked out our dishes. I went with  the Shōyu ramen (top) and Matt had the Akaoni, spicy ramen with ground pork (below):

According to Wikipedia,

Shōyu ramen typically has a brown and clear color broth, based on a chicken and vegetable (or sometimes fish or beef) stock with plenty of soy sauce added resulting in a soup that’s tangy, salty, and savory yet still fairly light on the palate. Shōyu ramen usually has curly noodles rather than straight ones…

The trouble was that it was inedible. Instead of the wonderful fragrant broth steaming out of the bowl, there was an overwhelming odor that Matt describes as like “the inside of the tropical exhibit at the zoo”…dank, fetid and nasty coming from both of our dishes. I nibbled a piece of the pork, which seemed to be untainted, but the noodles, broth and even bamboo slices were awful. We had gobbled up the gyoza before the soup arrived, but not without remarking that they were “not awesome” and the ramen seemed to be a continuation of that theme.

I don’t often leave restaurants, but there was no way we could overcome this one so we took refuge in Cactus Club (of all places!) next door.

Benkei is a chain with no less than 5 locations in Vancouver – and more internationally – so they must be doing something right but  I won’t be back.

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Benkei Ramen
545 West Broadway, Vancouver (various)