The new Chinese restaurant Ben Ben Hot Pot, which opened in Berkeley in spring 2024, serves chicken-shmaltz rice and soup bases made with tripe and oxtail. (John Metcalfe/Bay Area News Group)
Fans of all-you-can-eat dining — and who isn’t? — have an interesting new option in Berkeley with the debut of Ben Ben Hot Pot.
The Chinese restaurant is having its soft opening at 1585 University Ave., in the former space of momo-slinger Himalayan Flavors. Its spacious dining room is open for lunch and dinner, with a menu given over almost exclusively to various forms of hot pot.
First, the soup bases: Ben Ben is really promoting its pork tripe and chicken version, which comes default not-spicy, but there’s also an ox-tail base, a beef-rib base and a Golden Palace Fish Maw and Chicken base. Some of these can be made spicy or half-half mixed. Prices range from $28.99 to $49.99 per person for the special Golden Palace broth, which may seem like a chunk of change until you consider the all-you-can-eat aspect.
There are five categories of ingredients to dip into your soup to cook it yourself at the table. The meat options include prime Angus, tenderloin, lamb shoulder, pork belly, chicken breast, goat slices, beef aorta, Chinese sausage and duck blood. For seafood there’s blue crab, head-on shrimp, scallops, lobster balls, shrimp paste (scoop it up into a ball and watch it solidify in the hot broth), fish slices, fish tofu and more.
Vegetarians might enjoy the tofu and yuba, and the galaxy of vegetables like white radish, mushrooms, seaweed knots, watercress, cauliflower and lotus root. For starch, diners can add udon noodles, vermicelli, tteokbokki (Korean rice cakes) and — perhaps most intriguingly — chicken-schmalz rice. Saul’s Restaurant & Delicatessen, look out for the new competition?
And then it’s condiment time. Ben Ben has an extensive add-on bar with various sauces both savory and spicy, plus things like peanuts, sesame, chilis, scallions, cilantro and ginger. The restaurant does not yet have a liquor license, but there are regular drinks like soda and tea.
Details: Open for lunch and dinner at 1585 University Ave., Berkeley; (510) 704-0174
Originally published at John Metcalfe