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2013-05-30
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元祖札幌味噌拉麵；味噌不濃醬油突出；使用爽滑西山麵條，暫時仍能站穩陣腳。如不介意偏咸的湯底, 可以一試。Springy thick ramen from the famous Nishiyama factory;Decent but fairly salty miso broth;Remember to add butter.Worth a try.Location exchanged:This, together with Hakodate, is one of the more well established ramen joints in Hong Kong. It used to be located near Exchange Square but is now across the road. Fairly spacious. About triple the size of Hakodate. About 10 counter seats facing the wall and a number of square tables with standard condim
味噌不濃醬油突出；
使用爽滑西山麵條，
暫時仍能站穩陣腳。
如不介意偏咸的湯底, 可以一試。
Springy thick ramen from the famous Nishiyama factory;
Decent but fairly salty miso broth;
Remember to add butter.
Worth a try.
Location exchanged:
This, together with Hakodate, is one of the more well established ramen joints in Hong Kong. It used to be located near Exchange Square but is now across the road.
Fairly spacious. About triple the size of Hakodate. About 10 counter seats facing the wall and a number of square tables with standard condiments such as pepper, shichimi and soy sauce.
Menu:
As the name of this place suggests, they serve Hokkaido style ramen, i.e. Miso soup base with thick curly noodles. What's surprising is that they also do tonkotsu ramen, shio ramen (salt) and shoyu ramen. Largely with the same toppings, i.e. char siu and menma. You need to add about HK$20-30 for an egg.
They also have a fair amount of other cooked dishes such as stuffed squid (with rice inside the grilled squid), gyoza, kakuni (pork belly in a stew) and some rice dishes as well.
I choose what I assumed to be their signature ramen - Miso ramen with butter ($10 dollar extra).
It came after a short wait. Looked pretty mild:
Broth: The miso soup had more more shoyu taste than miso. This felt like slightly a watered down version of Hakodate and Baikoken. Mind you, the shoyu taste was not weak at all. I won't recommend drinking the whole broth. Fortunately, the piece of butter significantly enhanced the whole broth. In fact I couldn't imagine eating miso ramen without adding butter. The piece of butter was nice. Could do with at least double the size though. The butter helped bring out the taste of the miso as otherwise the miso would be overwhelmed by the shoyu.
I think the broth here was relatively better than Bishamon Zero (though I chose the spicy version at Bishamon which did not have a butter option.)
All in all, a bit too salty but acceptable. I added some sichimi and pepper to balance the flavour out.
Noodles:
The main reason why I came here was because I wanted to have the famous Nishiyama noodles again. The first time I tried Nishiyama noodles was at Inari (it's now replaced by "RON ramen"). It's supposed to be a "premium quality" noodle.
As expected, the noodles were good. Those were smooth and springy. Hakodate's were springer (at it's best). I prefer the noodles here than Baikoken.Char Siu: Not good at all. Tough and tasteless.
Menma: This was OK. Fairly crunchy.
The chopped onions and spring onion stems added more flavour to the broth but the konbu was fairly salty. Gyoza: A bit oily but the taste was fine. The pork and onions inside were relatively fresh.
Service: The waitresses were very efficient and polite.
Conclusion:
The bill came down to HK$121 (including service).
Their Nishiyama noodles still give them a slight advantage but they really need to do something about their salty broth.
Adding more miso, more butter but less shoyu should enhance the taste significantly.
Because of the noodles, I might return again to try other broths or Hiyashi Chuka (cold Chuka noodles with a number of toppings like ham, cucumber, crab meat and eggs).
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