Review | New Hong Kong restaurant review: Benkei – Japanese pancakes and grilled food, and everything was faultless
- This small Japanese restaurant specialises in two main dishes: savoury Japanese pancakes with various toppings, and grilled dishes
- Everything we tried was cooked to perfection; our favourite dish was the spring onion okonomiyaki with pork belly
For quite a while now, Instagram has been my go-to source for finding out about the latest restaurants. Friends – usually chef friends – post about the restaurants even before a press release is sent out, or before someone can write about it on openrice.com.
In this case, it led me to book counter seats at Benkei, an okonomiyaki (savoury filled pancakes) and teppanyaki (grilled food) restaurant that opened in early February. It has 12 seats around the teppan (flat-top iron grill), and several small tables.
The lunch menu offers eight sets that include salad, soup and pickles, while the one-page à la carte selection has okonomiyaki and several other dishes cooked on the teppan, plus oden (stew).
First up was the eel omelette (HK$88), whch the chef made free-form on the teppan before folding it into an even shape. It was excellent: tender, moist eggs rolled around fatty, substantial chunks of eel.
Prawns (HK$168 for two) came dissected into three “parts”: the prawn meat itself, the inner head, which the chef flattened under a weight so it was completely seared and entirely edible, and the outer head. The prawn meat was firm and sweet, and the outer head had soft, gooey innards.
