Thanks to a delayed flight (sorry, Tom! thanks, Tom!), I was able to make a quick stop to try out Santouka Ramen’s limited edition limited edition tantanmen last weekend. Santouka’s tantanmen is only available for one more weekend and is limited to 30 bowls a day. Is it worth it?
Even at 11:30am in the morning, there was a line and a wait. When I finally got my ramen, I was a bit disappointed. Look at the picture below, then look at the picture above. Um…yeah…seriously?
I mixed up the noodles and stirred up the shredded pork. The ramen had a really strong nutty smell and flavor. It’s not particularly spicy and really the main flavor was sesame oil, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The noodles were starchy-sticky and chewy. Given how cold it was Saturday morning, I gulped down the bowl with relish.
Santouka’s tantan noodles get a decent 5.5 out of 10 (a half point off for looking nothing like the picture).
10:48pm update: wow, I just read A Radiused Corner’s post on Santouka’s tantanmen and apparently, my bowl was missing a few ingredients. Did anyone get an “incomplete” tantanmen?
10:59pm update: I really should stop blogging while sleepy. My wife just reminded me that I *did* have a few small strands of pickled mustard plant in my ramen, which I forgot about. So it wasn’t quite incomplete. My mistake.
Santouka Ramen
(inside Mitsuwa Supermarket)
665 Paularino Ave
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
(714) 434-1101
Cash only
Hey thanks for the mention Ed! You know the zha cai didn’t have much flavor to it and I could’ve easily missed it myself. Yeah I thought the bowl was decent. Much more successful than Santouka Torrance’s Kimchi Ramen anyway.
@Dennis: Yeah, if that was a tweet instead of a blog post, it might’ve gone something like: Santouka tantanmen…meh. 😛
Santouka is going down hill. Last time I went they had replaced regular bowls with smaller styrofoam bowls and gave me a lame plastic spoon that wasn’t even big enough to hold the noodles. Same high price though. Around $9
@Steve: I’ve been complaining about the spoon for a while, too 🙂
So I finally made it here over the weekend! It is amazing… Thanks for sharing this location with us!
@Cal: glad you enjoyed it!
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