Jason and I met up for lunch one day and we were both in the mood for ramen. Luckily for us, Benkei Ramen had recently opened on Thurlow and it was a nice walking distance from my office. Jason explained to me that the Benkei on Denman is his favourite ramen place so he had pretty high hopes for the Thurlow location. The Denman ramen places, although very good, are too far for me to go at lunch so I was quite happy that a location had opened up closer to where I work.

We started first sharing a small plate of gyoza. At $3.50 for 5 pieces of gyoza, I thought it was a fair deal. The gyoza was tasted pretty standard so there isn’t very much to say but I did like how the gyoza skin was thin and slightly chewy (in a good way).

I decided to have the Shio ramen ($6.95) and added half a soft boiled egg for an extra $0.50. The noodles themselves were perfectly cooked and had a a nice, slightly chewy consistency to it. Jason ordered the same thing as me and we both noted that the shio broth did not have enough pork flavour to it and it seemed a bit watered down. He said that soup at the Benkei on Denman was definitely tastier. We also lamented that there was only two thin slices of chasu that came with our noodles. Jason said he recalled the Denman one was more generous with their meat rationing.

I enjoyed the ramen at Benkei. As far as ramen goes, it wasn’t bad although I’ve also had better. I wasn’t sure if the broth seemed thin and watering because they had only opened recently since Jason said that the Denman Benkei definitely had better broth. Due to its relatively convenient location near my work, I’ll probably go back again to see if they have ironed out their initial opening kinks.

Details:
747 Thurlow St, Vancouver
Tel: 604-568-8371

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Price: $

Tagged as: Cheap Eats, downtown, Japanese, Reviews, Vancouver