Ben’s Vietnamese & Chinese Restaurant

Karaōke at Bens on a Friday night is actually the best thing ever. Settle in for a delectable meal (if you can choose between the wide array of options), spoil yourself with BYO wine, and show off your Australian idol skills. People get in to it. The most fun karaōke night I have been to in ages.
I highly recommend the spring rolls!

Had a friends birthday party here last weekend and we had a ball! Great food! Entertainment was awesome! Great to see so many people get up and get into the Karaōke spirit! :) Only down fall is they don’t let you BYO your own beer! :(

Went here on a Saturday night for a work Christmas party. Wow. I think my hearing is actually permanently damaged due to the obscenely loud speakers used for karaōke.
The food! Slightly disheartened by the amount of noise, I found the food to be not too bad, basically generic chinese food which was fairly well cooked, we had plates brought out to our tables, the rice was nice, the pork which I think was supposed to be sweet and sour pork almost broke my teeth due to it containing bones still, there was also a honey chicken sort of thing which was extremely sweet, but tasted okay.
Did I mention it was loud? The food was a 3– star 4 effort but the noise and the tables being so crowded and smokers literally right next to the back door with stink blowing right back in made the night quite average.

Came here with a large group of people for dinner and karaōke.
The atmosphere in this place is good and the food plentiful but not sensational. The staff barely speak English and you find you often have to catch them 2 or 3 times to remind them to bring your drink out.
The main reasons Ben’s is so popular is for karaōke. Personally, I am no fan of it but I love laughing at people who do it. They have a wide selection of songs and its good to share a laugh with everyone.
So — do not go to Ben’s for the food as you will be disappoointed but if you are after a fun night out with karaōke or laughing at people who do karaōke, this is the place to be.

My colleagues and I had our minds set on a Chinese buffet meal as a celebratory end-​of-​month celebration last Friday when someone suggested we head over to Ben’s.
The rest of our party (6 people) had never been so we were all eager to try it out.
We were quickly seated upon arrival in a huge expanse of round tables with Lazy Susan’s in the centre of each. The décor reminded me strongly of the Chinese restaurants I ate at as a child — lots of Chinese prints and fake floral arrangements.
The staff were attentive if a little hard to understand at times. The amount of Chinese people dining there led us to believe it must be fairly well renowned within the local area.
I was hugely impressed when the waitress offered me a gluten free menu consisting of at least 7 appetisers and equal amounts of mains, and even a dessert!
I ordered the shredded pork and prawn rice paper rolls and san choi bao as entrée (there were several of us gluten-​free diners), salt & pepper squid & prawn, vegetables in garlic and grilled marinated pork chop for the main, and red bean desert.
The san choi bao was truly amazing. I would literally go back *just* for this dish. The mixture was sweet and savoury and utterly delicious when combined with the large crispy lettuce leaves.
The rice paper rolls unfortunately were a disappointment. They lacked any real flavour, and the prawns — despite being fat and lovely looking — were completely tasteless. When teamed with the abundance of rice noodles I just couldn’t finish the dish.
The salt and pepper squid was actually a highlight amongst everyone on the table, both gluten free and regular. The mix of salt and pepper was perfect and the batter was very light and crispy. The squid was a tiny bit overcooked, but this is super easy to happen and it didn’t ever get to the rubbery stage at all.
The vegetables in garlic was a very generous serving of gorgeous traditionally Chinese items in a thick garlic sauce. My only gripe with this dish was the lack of garlic flavour, but besides this it did the job as a «flash of green» in my bowl amongst the other items.
The grilled and marinated pork chop was also very tasty, however we were a little put off by the presence of bones in the pieces of meat. Despite that, it was a lovely ending to the savoury part of the meal.
The dessert was something I had personally never had before. It appeared to be a red bean mixture in the bottom of a glass with green clear looking syrup and condensed milk. It was utterly delicious and a really interesting way to finish up with such a lovely flavour that was sweet and yet slightly savoury with the beans.
I highly recommend this restaurant although I have heard it can get very busy and rowdy on Friday and Saturday nights due to the on-​site karaōke. The Friday lunchtime slot was quiet but still very enjoyable.

Heavenly tofu veggie garlic dish! This vegetarian was happy.

Here’s a few fun facts that will help you enjoy your Ben’s experience. Think of it as the safety card kept safely in the back pocket of your seat on the plane when you fly.
1. Always go to Ben’s in a group. It isn’t a venue for a romantic dinner for two, your family. A massive group of your friends is your only option here.
2. Don’t expect five-​star cuisine. Sure, it isn’t bad for what my family would call ‘Australian Chinese’ (the chinese food we buy in stores here being nothing like traditional Chinese /​Asian cuisine). It’s cheap, cheerful and the banquet options make it great to try a little of everything.
3. You’re not at Ben’s for the food. Your dinner is the entrée and the karaōke is the main meal and dessert rolled into one. Better yet if you’re there on a Friday or Saturday night and the ENTIRE room is singing along to Bön Jovi’s ‘Living on a Prayer’.
4. Do be prepared to drink. It is the worldwide accepted social lubricant and makes the karaōke far more palatable.
5. Practice your mad skills weaving through a maze of tables, chairs and people. When Ben’s is full it is full and they pack ever last toosh they can into the restaurant.
With those top five tips in mind, go forth and experience all that is Ben’s.

If you have any misgivings about going to a Vietnamese & Chinese restaurant called «Ben’s», fearing that it might not be authentic, let me put them to rest right now. The eponymous Ben has put together a pretty extensive menu encompassing a great deal of traditional Asian dishes, particularly regarding the Vietnamese offerings.
Speaking of, I’m a real fan of their ‘bun cha gio’ — deep-​fried Vietnamese spring rolls made from rice vermicelli paper, which makes them different from Chinese wheat-​bases spring rolls. They come in eight different varieties, with ‘Bun Chao Tom’ (Prawn Meat on Sugar Cane Vermicelli), being my personal favourite.

Oh god, this place is hellish. Crappy Australian-​style Chinese food (usually served banquet style so you can’t pick what you get), a massive, hot room full of huge round tables with no room to move around, and always full of groups of women on their Hen’s night or men on their Buck’s night screeching karaōke with the mic screeching feedback even louder. People seem to come here just to get wasted and sing karaōke, which I’m all for if it were Fat Louis’s or similar, but at what’s supposed to be a restaurant it’s pretty pointless. That’s cool, I’ve come to the realisation that one shouldn’t really think of Ben’s as a restaurant (which is probably for the best considering their food), but more of a place to pack into a room of people who will watch you sing karaōke while they eat spring rolls and honey chicken.
Maybe I’d like Ben’s more if I hadn’t first experienced it during what was supposed to just be dinner with friends. No one could talk to each other, or move, and the food didn’t do much to improve things. If you want karaōke and a messy night, come here. If you want a Chinese meal, don’t.

Honesty, who goes to Ben’s for the food? There are hundreds of restaurants that do a better feed. You go for one thing and one thing only… the Karaōke!
This place is brilliant when you’re with a group — the bigger and drunker, the better.
They will try and make you eat the banquet if you are a large group, which I think is pretty average. At least go with the Vietnamese banquet over the Chinese one.
If you are able to order off the menu, do that instead. Only make sure you order before all the big groups get settled, otherwise your meals will come out sporadically and will take forever.
But if you order, the Vietnamese Fun Rolls are the best value. You get so much food, you will be making fun rolls all night long and will be stuffed by the end of it. Or get the Phở, which from memory is only about $ 10 and is HUGE!
Be sure to start submitting your songs nice and early. If you wait too long you’ll never get called up. And don’t be scared, everyone in the restaurant is drunker than you.
Pick a fun party song that you know the lyrics too. And no, Hotel California doesn’t count — everyone thinks the know the lyrics, but ends up on the stage with no clue what the lyrics to the verses are… They only know the chorus.
3 stars for the food, but 4 stars for the fun times!

Ben’s falls under the category of restaurants that do not not very appealing, but taste amazing. It has come to the point where whenever I see a shady looking restaurant, I instantly think the food will taste delicious. Ben’s is the kind of restaurant you go to only for the food. You can forget about getting first class service at this place but who needs good service when the food is so good?
Most dishes I have had here are great, but I only come to this place for one thing– the phở! If you are not familiar with phở, it is the a Vietnamese soup dish wish consists of Broth, rice noodles and your choice of meat (Seafood, Chicken or Beef). Mint, lemon, bean sprouts and chilli can be added to the soup to taste. This may sound simple, but this dish is all about the broth and so many places have broth that may as well be made with water and stock (authentic phở broth is very intricate and involves many ingredients). I have tried phở at other places and they just do not compare to the phở from Ben’s. Other dishes I have had there all delicious and I am sure many Chinese or Vietnamese food buffs would agree that their flavours are authentic.
You would be a phool to not try this restaurant’s phở (sorry, I’m pretty bad at puns but at least I tried).

The three stars may be a bit unfair considering the food is very good, but the last time we went to Ben’s we waited over an hour to eat, couldn’t get a drink and gave up on the karaōke, which was supposed to be the point of our fun get together.
DON’T GO WHEN THE CRICKET’S ON AT THE ‘GABBA.
A bit dramatic I know but we’d booked weeks ahead and had a really bad time. The drunken cricket fans overran the place, smashed glasses and even knocked over a table as we were leaving. Not the proprietor’s fault I guess — and I’m sure they made heaps of money, but we had a crappy time. I’m thinking this was not a freak one-​off experience and will definitely be checking my cricket calendar before I go to Ben’s again.

Don’t go here expecting a 5 star restaurant, this place is 3 and a half at its best. Having said that, the place is decent, clean and the service is pretty fast.
They do tend to cram a lot of tables into the joint, but to experience the food and the ‘Ben’s Restaurant Experience’ like it should be experienced, you need to go there on a Friday or Saturday night and stay past 9pm.
They have KARAOKE people!!! It’s so much fun and it makes the place come alive. From the hours of 9pm to 11:30pm on a Friday and Saturday night, you can get up there and try out your singing voice in front of the restaurant. You can pick your song and be a star, or be boo’d off stage.
Hey listen, I got up there with my friend and we were terrible and people still cheered us on! I think the worse the singer you are, the more cheer you got. A verrrry good incentive for those shy ones!
So yes, the food is very tasty, especially the deep fried beef strips in peking sauce… oh so yum. But visit for the karaōke… not many chinese restaurants do this… and it’s worth a shot! Big smily face!