Poor execution for a classic ramen – 3/10

Restaurant

First impressions were already not great. As I walked into an empty restaurant a woman was already just standing inside and waiting. So there was nobody to really show where to sit or if we should wait. It even seemed like the restaurant might’ve been still closed but they forgot to lock the door.

I was then given a menu that was just 3-4 pages of printed A4 paper that looked like it was used since the setup of the restaurant. The options also were baffling – the first page showed Tonkotsu, Truffel Tonkotsu, Miso Tonkotsu, Curry Tonkotsu. What was even more interesting, second page had Hakata ramen, which is yet another Tonkotsu ramen with slightly different toppings. Seems that my choice was one of five Tonkotsu, so I’ve decided to go with Hakata.

I’ve also ordered Chicken Karaage and some beer.

Waiting

And then I got to observe the restaurant itself – for which I had plenty of time as the Karaage took at least 25 minutes to arrive. And if you think this was because it just took long for them to cook it the other visitor waited same amount of time for their ramen.

The restaurant itself was very bland cookie cutter place, considering they have moved locations I was really disappointed as you could reuse the same look for any other restaurant and it would fit. There was nothing there that would say its japanese or a ramen place.

Snack

Ramen

After waiting 25 minutes for my dish to arrive, I got Karaage which amazingly was 2 big pieces of chicken. This was uncommon as in 99% of places when you get Karaage its little bites of chicken. But nonetheless I’ve tried and the taste was nice, the chicken was juicy and the sauce worked quite well. The issues with size was quite apparent – chicken was very hot in the middle and took quite a while to cool, and grabbing the huge piece with chopsticks was quite inconvenient. However for me the taste is the crucial element and I was quite satisfied and looked forward to my Hakata Ramen.

To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. The broth was definitely creamy but that’s about it. The noodles didn’t feel homemade and they were definitely not the thin noodles that you would see in standard hakata ramen – maybe they were thin but cooking them for half an hour quadrupled their size. The egg consistency was nice however too salty for my taste. And then the biggest disappointment hit – the pork was very fat slices of very dry and tasteless pork. It was like all the juiciness of pork was lost and now just eating pure muscle. Even though I came in hungry I couldn’t finish the dish as it was so underwhelming.

Summary

I’m not sure if I came at the wrong day or wrong time, or maybe the restaurant changed chefs together with location, however what I ate was a really poor attempt at what is supposed to be quite a straightforward ramen style. The Chicken Karaage was quite tasty even if not the most convenient to eat. However the ramen was poorly executed and that with a steep price of 15 EUR unfortunately puts the Hakata Ramen from NANTO at score of 3/10.