the ramen blog & other goodies!

Our local Marukai is having a regional ramen sale. This is supposed to be a Tokyo tsukemen but I don’t really taste anything special. Tsukemen is an odd ramen where the noodles are served seperate from the soup. Tokyo tsukemen is supposed to be cold. You dip the noodles into the soup like you would with cold soba. The noodles are quite good, as usual for this kind of “fresh” ramen, but the soup is so-so and non-descript. The noodles get an 8, but the soup only gets a 6.

This chicken shoyu ramen is pretty average. Skinny noodles. So-so soup. Corn, onions, and a slice o’ the traditional mystery meat. It gets a 5.

Wan tan men with shoyu flavored soup. And piggy naruto (fish cake slices)! The noodles are so-so. They soup is decent. And there’s a few pieces of won ton and assorted goodies. It’s not the best ramen in the world, but it’s fun! It gets a 7.5 (bonus half point for the piggies).

Well, it’s not *horrible*…but that’s about the best thing i can say about it. Skinny tasteless noodles. Bland soup. It comes with some seaweed bits and such. I guess it gets a 3.

Mmm…back to the shoyu ramens. This one’s not bad. Slightly wider and chewy noodles. Soup’s decent. There’re bits of onion and maybe 3 whole pieces of shinachiku, and the obligatory mystery meat. Overall it’s pretty decent. It gets a 7.

This is different. Hirauchimen to dashisyoyu…flat-made noodles with pork bone shoyu soup…more or less. (Trivia: the kanji for pork in Japanese is the kanji for dolphin in Chinese!) This was pretty good! It doesn’t taste like a “typical” ramen. The noodles are flat and chewy and the soup is pretty tasty and rich. There’s a lot of goodies including little bits of pork meat (like miniature meat–err–cubes…), some bamboo, and lots and lots of spring onions. I’m not sure I’d rate this as a ramen because it’s a little different than the “typical” japanese ramen but it’s good enough to get an 8.