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| - Going in, I was a bit wary since this place had a 3.5* rating, but there was a line out the door even at 9pm on a Monday. It's popular, so hopefully it was going to be good.
It's a narrow restaurant with stools along long tables, a bar and right in front of the kitchen. I was very excited to find a ramen restaurant that let you see the action. It was all very high energy with the waitresses and cooks greeting customers as they entered and left and loud music which was usually upbeat jazz. There's a wood motif going on there with wooden stools, tables, ladles, and walls made of 3" blocks.
They have some traditional ramens as well as some modern interpretations such as the spicy garlic and the cheese ramens. We ordered the miso ramen and spicy garlic ramen. The waitress asked if we wanted shoulder or belly. Pork fat good. So we got the belly.The waitress then asked how rich and fatty we wanted the broth. My heart skipped a beat. More pork fat please. The noodles were chewy and consistent with the alkaline noodles that I've had. The broth is pork bone based and ,according to their website, boiled for 20 hours. They don't have a tonkotsu ramen on the menu, but since they need to use their broth as the base for all the other ramens, I guess they had to hold back on the collagen that would have been needed for a tonkotsu. The pork belly was about the size of 2 slices of thick cut bacon and quite tender.
The spicy garlic ramen was spicier than what I was expecting from a Japanese restaurant. The heat level was around what a typical jjigae would be. The heat and the garlic ended up masking a lot of the pork flavor and the beansprouts and scalliions didn't stand a chance. It's a good soup if you're a chile head and looking for something new.
The true star though was the miso ramen. It was acccompanied with corn, garlic oil and what I think was a bit of finely shredded pork. The nutty flavor of the miso was balance well with the pork stock and the extra pork fat. I couldn't stop smiling as I ate it. I'll have to try the shio next time for the unadulterated pork flavor.
It's nowhere near to what I had at Monta in Las Vegas which started my hunt for the perfect ramen, but it is definitely worth the trip and the wait in line.
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