Yachiyo Ramen    八千代麵坊  

[Eng. review below]

看得出鹽味及魚介（醬油）拉麵成為招牌拉麵的原因．！(◎_◎;)

湯頭：辣味不突出但湯頭頗有特式．有很重的”魚介”及”鹽味”湯頭（比”武藏”更為濃郁），再加入淡味噌．在香港暫時較少有，但在這些日本的傳統拉麵口味一向流行．

拉麵：麵質一般。可能是中華soba但有點過熟．味道清淡．只有些微蛋味．

溏心蛋方面：　佐敦的”品尚”都唔錯．不過喜歡溏心蛋的朋友可能更喜歡”丸玉”．但在港島區溏心蛋暫時最出色!

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「八千代」與「豚王」、「一風堂」，即重、濃、豬骨湯頭拉麵店，完全風馬牛不相及．

喜愛「武藏」白武骨的食家應喜歡「八千代」，因魚介味更為濃郁．

喜愛「橫網」的食家相當會很喜歡「八千代」那清新的野菜配料及魚介及鹽味湯頭．

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大根：完全吸收了鰹節湯的精華，但難得地仍可做到爽口，清新。大力推介！

餐前的免費小菜"青豆昆布"：看似簡單，但青豆吸收了昆布的味道．無論青豆或昆布都都相當爽口有鮮味！

看來本店的野菜料理有很強的實力!！(◎_◎;)

大廚及侍應都有禮。環境坐得舒服，又有街景.有點似"樓上Cafe"。

確是一個可在繁華鬧市中竭息一下的地方。

絕對可以一試。



I am usually quite skeptical of the quality of Asian cuisines in Central, especially after trying "Kyoto Joe" and some others because I think they tend to be a bit overpriced for the quality provided. I'm equally skeptical about the authenticity of Japanese cuisines in Mong Kok (but that was proved very wrong by "Jinya" 陣屋). Nevertheless, I felt like a bowl of ramen during working hours but there weren't many choices around where I work. So it was either Wan Chai , CWB or Central.

Having tried "Yukitei" at Wanchai, and not in the mood to fight it out in CWB, I remembered "Hachiyo". This was a recommendation from my wife and she'd like me to try it out. This time I was the guinea pig.

The restaurant was relatively easy to find. Just climb the slope along the street where "Yung Kee" was located and turn left at the first junction. You should be able to see Soho Square. You'll need to know the address because I didn't notice any obvious sign at the front of the building for both the building itself or for Yachiyo. It's located at the 3rd floor.

I got in without waiting at 1:00p.m. It was pretty busy but not completely filled up. What was particularly nice about Yachio was that they had large windows all over the restaurant. Natural light illuminated the whole place and it felt pretty relaxing even if there were a lot of people. The customers, most of them ladies, and the staff, were all pretty relaxed and enjoyed their own conversations. It somehow felt very much like a comfortable cafe in Shinjuku.

Again, though I understand the "Shio Ramen" (literally Salt Ramen) was their signature ramen. I nevertheless ordered a spicy miso ramen as well as a portion of cold turnip. I ordered the cold turnip, which looked pretty good thanks to the comments and photos provided by previous food commentators.

First came the complimentary appetizer, it was a dish of green beans mixed, or perhaps I should say marinated, with konbu. The cold turnip came shortly afterwards. Both were excellent! The green beans was super fresh and crispy. It really soaked up the fresh konbu taste. The kobu had quite an amazing fresh taste to it - a refreshing freshness from the sea but not overwhelmingly salty. I really enjoyed it - perhaps I was even nodding to myself when I was tasting it! Highly recommended even if you have to order a separate portion.

The turnip was excellent! It's a cold dish with spring onions and shredded bonitos placed on top. Evey single piece of turnip was very well marinated with dashi, i.e. a bonito fish broth, and light Japanese soy sauce, perhaps with a bit of sake as well. Every piece of turnip absorbed the broth and the aromatic spring onion taste completely. The texture of the turnips were also perfect! Fresh and crisp. It was cooked thoroughly but was still perfectly crisp, which is extremely hard to do. I haven't had better turnips in Hong Kong than this. This is better than those I've had at "Ishiyama" (fully cooked but the sauce was not clear enough, so the taste wasn't too clear as well), "New Kotobuki" (pretty good at family cuisines but not at crisp as here), "Sakaegawa" (their turnips were well marinated but not completely cooked) or any Izakaya/ Japanese restaurants I've tried for that matter. It's even better than any Kaiseki Ryoli I've tried in, e.g. Nadaman or in Japan. Highly recommended!

The pretty substantial bowl of ramen arrived after about a 10 minutes wait:First about the broth, the ramen broth had a very strong bonito taste plus just a bit of chilli oil, which wasn't that spicy. It still felt a bit like a ShiO ramen with a bit of miso and some chilli oil. The miso taste was less strong than the miso ramen at "Hakodate", "Sampachi" or "Domon". It must be a type of light miso, which was not too strong but similar to a normal miso soup kind of taste. Ultimately, it was the bonito taste that shined through and left the strongest impression. The bonito taste was even stronger than those provided in "Menya Musashi". It's pretty unique in Hong Kong. In fact, this type of mixed broth, i.e. shio with fish dashi, or miso with fish dashi...etc. is very common in Japan and is thus quite authentic here. All in all, pretty good.

The noodles were nothing special. The size was "normal" (not too thin like the Kyushu style noodle nor as thick as the Sapporo style). The egg taste was light but there wasn't much taste otherwise. If this was a chuka soba, I'd say it might have been slightly overcooked. It's a pity because all other components were very excellent. It's still acceptable overall. The good point about the noodle was that the size was very substantial! I almost couldn't finish the whole bowl All in all, not bad.

There were a bit too much bean sprouts in the ramen for my a meat-eater like me. But I know many Japanese customers enjoyed it, including my wife. The black vegetable, possibly seaweed - again, the high quality konbu I believe, was also quite nice.

Char Siu: It was the thin, firm type marinated with soy sauce as opposed to the fat and tender ones you eat at Buta O. It's very much like those you eat with chuka cold soba ”中華そば”. Not bad.

Egg: This was very good! As commented by other reviewers, the egg was really excellent! The yoke was nice and soft. Not only did it have egg taste, the egg white was also well marinated in Japanese sweet shoyu as well. This is definitely one of the best I've tried so far! I've recently tried "Hinsho" at Jordan, that was quite good too. "Maru Tama" at TST is also very good, if not better - nice and soft and came in a whole egg!

Conclusion:

The service was good. Every one was polite. They certainly had a lot of staff for the size of the shop (one staff every 3 meters)!

HK$75 for the noodle and HK$35 for the turnip. I noted that they had a lot of other vegetable dishes in their menu like from lotus roots, differet types of salad and other vegetable dishes. All at reasonable price.

The broth here is quite unique but authentic. The spicy broth here had a strong bonito and shio taste, which probably confirmed that they serve the more traditional types of broths in Japan, i.e. shio, shoyu, fish and probably miso. Although the noodle was not particularly interesting, the egg was definitely very good.

All the vegetables provided were super fresh and delicious! This almost drew the limelight away from the ramen in my view. It's almost worth coming here just for the turnip and vegetable dishes, even for a meat eater like me.

If you are a fan of "Yokozuna" and the lighter broths at "Tamashi", I think you'll like the ramen and the vegetable dishes here very much.

If you are a fan of heavy pork bone broths, i.e. "Buta O" and "Ippudo", you'll find that style here completely different from what you're used to.

If you like the white samurai bone at "Menya Musashi", I think you'll like the equally bonito based stock here. The fish soup taste here is even stronger. The noodle is a lot thinner than Menya musashi though - which is fine for me because I think the noodles at Menya Musashi too thick anyway.

If you like the traditional broths, i.e. shio, fish dashi, shoyu, I think you'll like it here - as long as you are not too fussed about the not too chewy noodles.

Combined with it's relaxing ambiance, it's definitely a decent option for ramen in Central!

Definitely worth a try!

At the recommendation of my friend Dan, I decided to try the ramen at Yachiyo Ramen in Sheung Wan. I've been itching to find some good authentic ramen here in Hong Kong - I miss Ippudo in New York! The restaurant is located in some obscure alley way, but there was still a line when I came here for lunch.
Luckily I was seated at the bar fairly quickly. They gave me some veggie and carrots to snack on while I got to observe how the ramens were made behind the bar.

I made reservations a day in advance, but when we arrived we were told there was no booking under my surname. Anyway, there's no point arguing with them right, so we just waited instead. Luckily there were 3 countertop seats so we didn't have to soak ourselves with sweat outside the shop waiting. It was quite busy on a Tuesday night and we took that as a good sign.

The tsukemono were place immediately in front of us, they don't mess around here. We were starved so fired off our usual favourites. The edamame was salted nicely but they should have let it cool down a bit before serving. The gyoza filling was juicy, and the curry one was particularly so, however the skin was not crispy enough to the point of being slightly doughy. The yakitori was fantastic, and the staff were able to make us 3 instead of the 2 in a dish to accommodate us. The smoked salmon salad looked decent and it turned out to be fresh, though the salmon was a bit dry and there wasn't enough salad dressing, with quite a large chunk of the salad being eaten on its own without any taste. The fish cake lacked flavour despite my vigorous dip into the ginger sauce, but actually the texture was nice and it was overall acceptable.The ramen was goooooood. My spicy miso had a mild hint of chili oil and i added more chili powder for an extra kick. The regular miso was a bit too oily but the soup base was rich without being too heavy. The noodles were thick just how I like them, but perhaps cooked just a tad over the mark and the noodles broke off into smaller pieces. The condiments were plentiful with 3 pieces of cha shiu and balanced the whole dish well. The egg was nice, but not molten, though I suspect it's hard to get it just right if you had to make it in advance.I asked for ox tongue as it was mentioned in other reviews, but was told by the staff that they don't have it, only ox tongue croquette, though they were also aware that this "rumour" existed online. Unfortunately we were too full to try it. Next time.The food came too quickly, I didn't have time to savour each of the appetisers. However the staff were considerate enough to wait for us to finish our snacks first before asking us if we would like our ramen to come. The tea was filled regularly, to their merit. Our seats gave us a good view of the cooks making the ramen.Compared to the one round the corner, I prefer this one as the ramen tasted more authentic and the variety of other dishes fared better too.

walked in .

ordered Miso Ramen and a spicy ramen

Noddles : texture is good!

Soup base : could be richer but is tasty

service very good and nice

Egg: is the best Japanese style egg I ever had in Hong kong

With seating for only about 35, you need to get to Yachiyo early for lunch (before 12:30pm) or you'll be waiting. Despite the small space, seating isn't overly cramped and service is very efficient and friendly. Given the space, this is strictly a eat and leave place.

The menu is straightforward with 5-6 choices of ramen, some cold noodle options and some starters.

The spicy ramen definitely had a kick, but wasn't "can't taste the noodles" spicy. Their namesake Yachiyo ramen came with a 5 large pieces of Japanese char-siu and was good, although not outstanding. Both ramens included a delicious sugar-yolk egg. The Yachiyo is a bit pricey at 80hkd, which I thought was a bit expensive for just ramen.

A number of Japanese were eating at the restaurant when I was there, so I guess it's pretty authentic. The waiters appear to speak good Japanese as well.

In case you have trouble finding it, it's just down the stairs from Kau Kee.

My friend recommended that we have a dinner at Yachiyo, because he said the food was very good. Instead of choosing the typical ramen dishes, we chose to have a lighter meal consisting off:

* Pig's Liver
* Tempura
* Fried Chicken
* House Special SaladOverall, the food was delicious. I usually try to avoid eating liver, because I dislike the taste, but I found myself happily sampling the pig's liver. The texture was like patte, and the liver went well with the yellow mustard on the side. Next was the shrimp tempura which was great; Yachiyo's tempura batter seems to be sprinkled with some vegetables, which adds more taste. The fried chicken was also tasty and had just the right amount of crispiness and juiciness. Lastly, the special house salad was tasty, but a little too spicy. If I'm around the area, I'll definitely plan a trip back to this restaurant.

Returning to my regular place yesterday for dinner with a friend. Coz it'd been raining the whole day - the restaurant was surprisingly empty.

I always love their Sea Snails. It is surprising that this simple dish is made with such tedious procedures. First, the snails are washed, boiled, and each snail is taken out from the shell so the intestine can be removed. Then, all the sea snails are put back into the shells and are soaked in a special broth. In the last step, the snails are put all together again to be boiled one last time. This dish tastes very fresh, with a slight vinegar taste and a residue of rice wine. After being boiled two times its texture is still soft and surprisingly not rough.

We also had the Organic Vegetarian Cold Noodle ($58) and Spicy Miso Ramen ($58). Their veggie noodle is made with slices of cucumbers, mushrooms, bean curd sheets, eggplant, seaweed, lettuce and tomato with a sweet vinegar dressing. All of the ingredients are neatly lined up on the top of the noodles so it looks incredibly healthy. The texture of the noodle is so soft, yet not too starchy like it's been over boiled. The dressing is so refreshing you almost feel like you are having a Japanese penne salad.

The Spicy Miso Ramen comes with soft-boiled eggs, seaweed, pickles and few slices of Japanese pork in a red miso broth. It is well spiced and satisfyingly tasty. The spicy miso flavor is not too overwhelming, allowing you to enjoy the zest of the broth made with fish and vegetables.

Also tried their Ginger and Vanila ice cream and their latest addition, Red Tea ice cream made with Hokkaido milk! It's silky smooth and melts instantly in your mouth. Its sweet subtly spicy ginger taste, is so refreshing that is the prefect dish to end your meal with. And the Red Tea ice cream has a very strong after taste of rich tea. new-fav!

Full review:
http://www.hiphongkong.com/eat/restaurants/asian_cuisine/yachiyo_ramen_noho_hong_kong

The soup is not overly salty as most ramen places. Egg is perfect. Chashu pork is flavourful and not tough. They put pepper in the shio soup base which is an interesting combination.

Extra points given for the service (we sat at the bar). Km we got 2 extra pieces of chashu cuz the chef thought his ramen came one minute too slow. We got free dessert cuz they missed our appertizer order. Owner(?) chef was talkative and friendly without making us feeling being intruded on.

’d walked past this place quite a bit. It’s tucked away in On Wo lane, just behind Wellington Street in one of my favourite semi–hidden areas of the island. There are host of Japanese restaurants around the intersection of Aberdeen, Gough, Gage and Wellington streets, and I’m yet to really weed out the good from the bad. Yachiyo is definitely good. It offers ramen that closely resemble those you'd get in japan in terms of quality of ingredients and depth of flavour.

A Japanese friend had also given Yachiyo his seal of approval, based on the fact that the noodle company he works for supplies them. The ramen here had an amazingly soft texture, melting in your mouth as you ate them and spreading a rich buttery flavour. They are the type of noodles you could eat unadorned and really enjoy.

Here though, the ‘spicy miso’ ramen I had came wonderfully presented in a bright red broth scattered with different additions. The soup really was exceptional, with a deep and hearty miso flavour just piqued by the right amount of spice. Its texture was especially satisfying. While not at all gloopy, the loaded flavours gave it a thickness so different from the tired, watery broths in a lot of places. I’m told this is because, instead of using a soup base, the chef here spend about six hour boiling down fish and other ingredients into his own broth.

Scattered into this broth are a liberal amount of other seasonings. Taking your chopsticks you can pull together the bits of seaweed, pickles, ginger and even strange very soft boiled egg, mixing all these with the noodles to further add to the depth of the flavours. Although these ramen aren’t cheap, they are definitely worth the extra cash for the attention given to their preparation.

The restaurant does a range of ramen, a couple of cold noodle dishes, a few snacks like gyoza and fried vegetables, and Japanese ice cream. The beer and sake are reasonably priced and would go well will a bowl of spicy noodles. Worth checking out.

In my mind, nothing is better than to have a hot bowl of miso soup ramen when the weather is getting cold, so my latest food adventure took me to this small Japanese ramen joint at Central. The restaurant was only half full when I arrived at around 1:45pm on a Sat afternoon. I was promptly seated at the bar overlooking the open kitchen. Ordered their spicy miso soup ramen with butter and a "home-made" fried vegetables dumpling. However, it turned out to be a bit of diasppointment really. It was not about the quality of the ramen, which was tangy and chewy, likely a product of 西山製麵廠; nor was there a problem with the vegetable dumplings, which were actually quite nice, with thin cripsy skin and not too oily; and their signature 溏心旦 that came with the ramen were pretty good, too. But the main problem lies with the soup base - it was quite bland really, with only a hint of miso and was not spicy at all As the soup base is really the "heart and soul" of any bowl of ramen, I consider this as a really disappointing ramen experience. And the rather small portion of the ramen certainly did not help to lift up my already sinking mood... ... so at the end, I walked away quite disappointed. Maybe it is time to go back to some "real" sapporo ramen joints again... ...