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| - Coming from the LA ramen scene, I expected long lunch lines after 30 minutes past their opening hour, but I was happy to see plenty of seating was available. Seeing that we weren't locals, our waitress explained their three ramen choices:
- Kome Miso (Hokkaido style) - best selling flavor
- Shiro Miso (Kyoto Style) - regular miso soup
- Mame Miso (Nagoya Style) - they use red miso for their "bold" flavor
Personally, I'm not a fan of red miso because the flavoring is too intense for my tastes. So my wife and I opted for the Kome and Shiro lunch set. The lunch set comes with bamboo, green onions, corn, bean sprouts, a slice of chashu, and your choice of thick or thin cut noodles. Additionally, we both ordered the karage chicken as the side item. The broth for the kome miso was rich, full bodied, and deeply flavorful while the shiro miso broth was lighter but still very satisfying. The thick cut ramen was softer and chewy compared to the thin al dente noodle. The single slice of chashu they give you is very thick. Seriously. I think it's the thickest cut I've seen at any ramen place. So if you don't order the lunch set and get the regular ramen then they actually give you three slices of chashu.
I was surprised to see that the karage chicken side order had four huge pieces atop some salad. The karage chicken was juicy and cooked perfectly. However, I felt that the chicken was missing some kind of dipping sauce to put it over the top.
At the end of the meal they served a small scoop of yuzu sorbet to cap off a great lunch.
The LA ramen scene is dominated by very good tonkotsu base ramen so eating a good miso base ramen is a nice change of pace.
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