the ramen blog & other goodies!

Day 2 of hakata ramen week continues with Ogawaya’s nagahamakko tonkotsu miso ramen. Ok, I’m actually cheating. I’m writing the reviews for day 1 and 2 on day 3, and I’m getting tired so I’ll probably write day 3’s review on day 4.

I think this is supposed to be based on an actual ramen-ya’s ramen. Surprisingly, this tasted very much like yesterday’s hakata ramen. At the time, I didn’t bother reading the label closely enough: same factory. Hmm…maybe not so surprising after all.

This ramen also had a bright orange soup, but was more fragrant; I could actually smell the miso. Like the pirikara ramen, these noodles were also prone to clumping and had almost the exact same great texture and taste, even though the instructions had different cooking times (2 mins vs 90 seconds). The soup isn’t spicy, which ironically gave it more flavor. The miso stood out, but I still couldn’t taste much of a pork flavor.

This ramen tastes a bit better than yesterday’s ramen, but the soup could still use some improvement. This gets a 7.

Our local Marukai supermarket is having a sale on a variety of hakata ramen so naturally, we had to buy them all! There were 5 different types. Guess what I’m having for dinner this week!

First up: the Ogawaya pirikara hakata tonkotsu miso ramen…whew! The bright orange soup had almost no smell, which was odd. The noodles were hard hakata style noodles, which were nice and al dente, and flavorful. These noodles tended to stick together while cooking, so you need to make sure you shake the noodles well or end up with a clumpy hard mess. The soup was mildly spicy, and that was about it. I couldn’t really taste the miso or the pork flavor. The spicy taste really reminded me of Korean spicy ramen, which isn’t a bad thing, but I didn’t think it went well with the miso tonkotsu flavor. This ramen gets a 6 out of 10…good noodles, so-so soup.

One neat thing about Shimadaya’s ramen is that there are three flavor packets! There’s a packet of soup base, a packet of seasoning oil, and a pack of spices. Those of you who enjoy reading ingredients will find that there’s both chicken extract and chicken extract powder, two kinds of fat (the seasoning oil is basically a mixture of chicken fat and pork fat), and two helpings of MSG (in the soup base as well as in the “spices”). Yum! (more…)

Deja vu…nissin’s shoyu ramen reminded me so much of maruchan’s shoyu ramen that i had to doublecheck the package. Nissin’s noodles are just as good, with a nice firm texture, and the soup is just as good. Just like the maruchan ramen, this is quite good, but not spectacular. It earns an 8.

This one is kind of interesting. It’s a kaedama kyushu hakata style ramen. Basically it includes a extra serving of noodles per soup packet (the “kaedama“). The noodles are the skinny hakata style, and though I prefer thicker noodles, these had a nice texture to them. The tonkotsu soup was decent but not extraordinary. This gets a 6.5 (extra half point for the extra noodles!).

In a nutshell, this is a very average ramen. The noodles are nicely chewy, though they have a tendency to really clump together and become a too-hard-to-chew mess. The soup is just so-so. I can only give this a 5.5 (half point off for the clumpiness factor).