Bento King (aka Bento King Buffet Club) is at 5308 Yonge St. in Toronto's North York region, a few blocks south of Finch Ave. It's recently opened and was featured in several places for being a very reasonably priced AYCE option at only $15. Its style is indicated as Taiwanese. Sadly everything is disposable except the bottom tray; the food “plate” is actually a plastic bento tray (at least it can be refilled during the same meal), the drink cups and the chopsticks are all throwaway. As expected the place fills up very quickly after noon. It's very small and everyone is squeezed into a few narrow long tables... definitely not fine dining. It's also quite loud due to this. But, can’t expect much for $15. Amazingly for this price, drinks are included from a fountain dispenser at the back which I neglected to photograph.
Congee was basically cloudy water with no flavour whatsoever. Fried rice, although fresh, also had almost no flavour. as in savour/saltiness/seasoning, or anything else. Stir-fry vermicelli was pretty much the same. Popcorn chicken was quite good, and had some savour to it. Spring roll had a little bit of an odd flavour, but wasn't bad and it wasn't oily either... it was also fresh (everything here seemed to be fresh.)
Shredded potatoes weren't bad, but had annoyingly hot peppers in them that I had to pick out or my mouth would be on fire, and it was not labelled as such. Curry chicken was quite delicious, but there's no way that that was pure chicken... it seemed like some bready chicken substitute, but I still enjoyed it. What was definitely pure chicken were the roasted chicken legs, which we both noted were unexpected given the low cost; they weren’t the best and also lacked seasoning but were definitely edible nonetheless. Thai spiced ground pork was excellent, and although it had some heat it wasn't annoying like the heat in the shredded potatoes.
General Tao chicken was also quite good and better than at other AYCEs I have been to. Steamed bun does not have any filling in it, but was quite fresh there are also steamed meat buns which were quite good and had a well-seasoned filling. Mapo tofu was okay, but not as flavorful as the appearance of the sauce would have it, nor as much so as this dish is supposed to be. Steamed broccoli was good although it could have used a little more seasoning, but again at least it was fresh.
There are no desserts; the steamed bun is about as close as it gets, but again no complaints nor expectations at this cost, especially with the included pop. It would be at around 6 - 6.5 / 10 if it was regularly priced (even with the pop) but as we always factor the (amazingly low in this case) price, it’s been kicked up significantly!
Rating: 9 - 9.5 / 10
