the ramen blog & other goodies!

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.

Whew! Garlic garlic garlic. The noodles are average and kind’a limp. The soup is so-so and garlicky. Lots of little pieces of thin-sliced garlic. Actually, the garlic flavoring is pretty mild. Pretty boring ramen overall. Be prepared to smell like garlic when you’re done. I give it a 6.

This ramen is not bad…not bad at all! The noodles are chewy, and the soup is mild but flavorful. It’s a “chicken flavored shoyu” soup base. The meat, if you can call it that, is wafer-thin mystery meat with a funky coarse texture. Overall I give it a 7.

drove all the way up to little tokyo for this. our first choice was daikokuya, which got rave reviews on assorted web sites, but unfortunately it’s closed temporarily on sundays. we ordered the shoyu ramen with a half order of chahan (fried rice), and an order of gyoza. the atmosphere was ok…nothing really special. the ramen was not bad, but not great. not as good as ebisu in huntington beach, that’s for sure. the noodles were decent and chewy, but the soup was flat. not bland, just very one-dimensional. the fried rice was pretty yummy, with tiny pieces of meat. the gyoza was very boring.
the ramen gets a 6. fried rice gets an 8. the gyoza gets a 5.

Kouraku Restaurant
314 E. 2nd St.
Los Angeles, CA
213-687-4972

very…ordinary but in a decent way. the meat is the typical poor excuse for a sliver of meat in these instant ramens…but it’s…slightly…spicy? …iiiiiiinteresting…well it’s not great but it’s not bad. it gets a 5.

tonkotsu-shoyu soup…i think the instant noodles that’re tonkotsu based are all pretty flavorful…yeah, i probably should’ve realized it earlier…this one has good soup and good noodles…the meat brings it down though…chewy and veiny…i give it a 7…8 without the meat.