Shop info:
Bentopia
Shop D, G/F, Far East Finance Centre, Admiralty
www.bentopia.com.hk
Various dates, lunch
~$60 per head
My workplace is located in the gap between Central and Admiralty. 10-15 minutes’ walk to the west is Lan Kwai Fong and SOHO with their numerous (somewhat pricy) restaurants as well as a collection of more-or-less reasonably priced Cha Chaan Tengs. A similar walk to the east lies Pacific Place with the expensive hotel restaurants. Here in the area surrounding Hutchison House, however, are mostly chain stores – Café de Coral, Maxim MX, McDonalds, Burger King (now closed), Fairwood, Caffe Habitu, Starbucks, PCC. You name it. Of course, I shouldn’t forget the Pumpernickel where I ended up having diarrhoea for the afternoon following their (some kind of) fish sandwich or the Shiki Japanese Restaurant where I suffered the same after their salmon sashimi don.
So, it was with great expectation and excitement when I waited for the opening of this new takeaway shop at the nearby Far East Finance Centre, and I became its first customer when it finally opened in December 2011. I loved the place back then, visiting three days a week, until things changed. My last visit was in April 2012 to pick up the VIP card which I no longer carry. This is, in fact, a record of how in the span of 2-3 months Bentopia turned from my preferred eatery into one that I would not return to.
ENVIRONMENT
As a takeaway shop, Bentopia has paid surprising attention to its interior design. The interior is mostly white with warm pink and brown décor. A thin strip of table along the road side window provide for those who would like to “dine in” and the interior easily fits 10-15 customers waiting for their bento. With more customers though, I’ve recently see queue lining up outside the shop, probably not the most pleasant experience in these hot and humid summer days!
SERVICE
The staff were generally friendly. If you visit often enough like I did in its early days, they might even recognize you and can greet you by name. Hell, they even remembered which bento I preferred!
FOOD
Bentopia is a combination of the words “bento” and “utopia” and the shop serves Japanese / Taiwanese bento. When I talked to the staff in its first week of business when customers came only sparsely, they mentioned that their ideal is to provide delicious bento that is freshly made, which is why there was usually a 5-10 minutes wait for the bento. During the first few weeks, they did stick to these principles and their bento were gorgeous. Soon though, with the growth of customers… things changed.
Corners started to be cut. Costs became more important in their equations. Gradually items started to be not freshly made. I still remember when I first visited the salad was mixed just before they hand you the bento. Then they changed it to putting the salad in plastic containers and serving the dressing separately. Then they changed to having it all mixed (with dressing) in those plastic containers.
The delicious "Stir Fry Beef with Ginger Sauce Bento" from Bentopia's first day of operation
The same bento, during the shop's third week. Salad already separated, no more deep fried crab meat toast, and quality going down.
During the first week there was this delicious deep fried crab meat toast, as can be seen at the back of the first photo above, which they made to order. That soon disappeared (costs?) and was replaced with crab meat vegetable packet, then there was gradually less and less crab meat in that packet until it disappeared from the menu. To replace it was some kind of cutlet shrimp, which evolved from a well-made, fresh shrimp to a rather mushy one…
The above “stir fry beef with ginger sauce bento” was another example of how corners were cut. In the early days the beef was filled to the brim, with a lot of beef and not much onion. Towards April (my last visit) there was less and less beef, more and more onion, as well as increasing “white space” – where you can see the rice. Quality deteriorated as well. Whilst this may be difficult to tell from the photos, early on the beef was tender and flavoursome, whereas towards April the beef got tougher and overcooked. They might have shifted from making it fresh towards having a pot of the stuff ready – that I couldn’t tell – but the difference in taste was monumental. Tough onion skins started to feature in those bento as well…
Deep Fried Maltose Chicken Bento
The “deep fried maltose chicken bento” didn’t escape such fate. To be fair, the honey sauce works quite well with the deep fried chicken, toning down the perceived “hot-air-ness” and adding an interesting angle to the saltiness of the chicken. However, size shrunk, chicken got thinner, and the sense of “freshly made” was eventually gone. Again, I have no evidence but got the feel from the bento that it was no longer freshly made.
Traditional Taiwanese Style Minced Pork Bento
Traditional Taiwanese style minced pork bento – never really liked this one, but that was probably personal. The minced pork was probably a bit too fatty for me.
CONCLUSION
This is probably the most difficult post I have ever written. Having been its first customer and thoroughly enjoyed the bento from the first couple of weeks of its operation, Bentopia is dear to me. Yet, the gradual, obvious but inevitable decline in quality which I was weary of since the beginning was troubling to see. Perhaps in this part of the city profitability is king. Perhaps any insistence on freshness and quality is futile in front of cost cuts. The bento are still not bad, probably still better than takeaway lunches from many nearby shops, and may provide decent lunch for many, especially those who do not know how good they once were. For me, I couldn’t bear to buy one of these only to remember how they used to taste.
Won't be returning unfortunately.
Summary (rated 1-5):
FOOD: (3/5) Not bad, but no longer amazing.
SERVICE: (4/5) Very friendly and cheerful. Lights up your day.
ENVIRONMENT: (4/5) Comfy for a takeaway shop.
BIG LOCUST'S RECOMMENDATION: (3/5) Not bad. It used to be good value but with decline in quality I feel that it’s more expensive than it was. At the same price.
