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A.Bento

It was the last day of Chinese New Year and my parents wanted to celebrate with a dinner out together. Wanting to make a good pick, seeing as yours truly, frequents restaurants and writes about her experiences. I solicited the help of a few fellow bloggers who suggested the new restaurant: A.Bento, for their modern spin on traditional Taiwanese cuisine. This was the result.

Worth noting is they have free parking at the back of the restaurant, but you can’t enter from the back, and will have to walk around to the front of the building. Although if you ask the staff, you can leave via the back entrance, pushing through a door that tends to stick.

Also worth mentioning is that you need to walk in understanding that this is fusion cuisine. That what is written may not be what you are expecting, and what you expect is not what you get. My parents read the Chinese characters and expected what they knew said dish to be. However, they got something completely different from what they wanted and hand in mind, instead. So understand fusion and read the English description.

We would order several plates and share. Given the price to the serving size, this is definitely more one of those places that has smaller portions with finer ingredients.

The Appetizer Trio was said to be a mix of Chicken Nuggets, Fish Cake, and Squid Tentacles. However there was only 2 pieces of squid. They are my favourite, so I was looking for more, to discern if I got to help myself to another piece, or have to save some for the rest of the table. The nuggets were dry could have used a sauce, something along the lines of a sweet and tangy blend. In hindsight we should have simply gotten the deep fried squid instead, it was the best out of the three in this mix. Although all 3 were on the oilier side, and not necessarily what I would order again.

The best dish as deemed by the table was the Deluxe Tri Sauce Chicken with Chicken, Tofu, King Oyster Mushroom, and Sticky Rice Cake. The Chinese translation had referred to this as chicken with a wine sauce, but this had no wine. It could have used some and more salt. It also had an excessive amount of ginger curls. A decent bite now and a again, but a little too much given the size of each. I did like the steamed and compacted rice cake. It ate chewy and had soaked up some of the sauce making it feel like you are eating the food from the future. A compact and travel friendly food cube, in chicken flavour.

The Braised Beef Noodles were my favourite dish of the night, although is not my favourite place to go for beef noodle soup. This dish is only available for dine in, with limited quantities made daily. It is served cloched in a shroud of smoke. The smoke flavours and adds a layer of richness to the dish. This is the most lean and beautiful version of beef noodle soup I have had to date. Everything tasted premium, this was refined. However, when I crave beef noodle soup, I want it to sit heavy and eat fatty, something that satisfies a craving like only grease and fat does.

The Eggplant and tofu stew was more like a stir fry of eggplant, tofu, garlic and green onion. All the elements were prepared perfectly, the texture of the vegetables were crisp, and the tofu chewy. It just tasted similar to our ginger chicken in a brown, salty, soy based sauce, like above.

The Pork intestine stew read more like a stew with braised pork intestine, pork blood, and pickles. It was one of the items my parents ordered wanting one thing and not agreeing to what was before them. Given the title you would expect plenty of pork intestine, however we didn’t get more than 3 small slivers of intestine. We counted because not everyone would get to try this, in our party of four. There was so many blood cubes in this, and I couldn’t stomach more than 2 for it’s texture and condensed flavour. It just tasted off, and you are left feeling like you should not be drinking it (I am definitely not a vampire). Plus you also have to get over its unique fragrance and gamey flavour.

We were so disappointed by this dish and did our best to power through and eat as much of this blood stew, that we didn’t want. My parents don’t like sending food back, and prefer to accept it as a loss. However, I did end up expressing our dissatisfaction of the dish with its lack of intestine to blood ratio. Our server would relay our disappointment to the chef and they took 20% off the bill. As per our server, “the ratio of intestine to blood is suppose to be 80% blood, 20% intestine and someone made a mistake in preparing the dish”. We only managed to finish 1/3 of it and the serving isn’t even that large.

In conclusion, this was an interesting modern take on Taiwanese cuisine. It wasn’t for myself or my family, who prefer the traditional Chinese flavours. That and maybe we didn’t know how to order properly. For those who decide to visit, I advise treating it like a dressier restaurant, given the prices and the refined interpretations on traditional Taiwanese dishes.

A.Bento
656 W Broadway, Vancouver, BC V5Z 1G1
(604) 423-9585
abento.ca

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