Chinese

Benser - tasty?

I’m not really sure what the English name for this restaurant is, but it’s on the corner of Life Plaza. It initially was just a dessert place specializing in Chinese desserts like mango pudding and shaved ice, but now it’s on the hand-shaved (dao xiao) bandwagon.

The BF ordered the house special vegetarian noodle soup. The noodles were decent and chewy, but the broth tasted like a boullion cube. It seemed like someone just threw in a bunch of vegetables like bok-choy and tomatoes into a pot of water and powdered vegetable stock.

I got the house special beef noodle soup. It was supposed to be spicy, but I couldn’t taste it at all. There was a bit of the Szechuan peppercorn taste, but it was pretty weak. The broth was also lacking in depth. I had to dump a bunch of chili oil and vinegar in it to make it taste better. The beef was surprisingly tasty though and had just the right amount of seasoning.

For dessert, we shared the peanut rice-ball which is just glutinous rice balls (like mochi) covered with sweet crushed peanuts. It’s simple, but delicious.

I don’t know if it’s because they’ve only started branching out into non-dessert food, but I thought both of our noodle soups were mediocre. Next time, I’ll go somewhere else to get my noodle soup fix and go to Benser for dessert.

By Louise (see more of her posts). You can find more of Louise's writing at her own website NakedSushi.

© 2008 la.foodblogging.