Whenever I get a craving for ramen I drop by this small shop. I usually order the regular (non-spicey) ramen. I love the texture of the noodles, and how the soup doesn't have any msg. It's quite tasty (pork bone based), and one of the better ramen soup bases I've tried. Cost-wise it's about hkd60-80 for a bowl, so while it's not expensive, it's not cheap for a bowl of ramen. I consider this place more for a snack before or after dinner than a place to grab a meal. What kind of sucks is they close by 10pm.

Their side dishes are okay, but are definitely just a complimentary piece. Ramen-wise you can't really go wrong with any of your selections. One more thing to note is that you'll almost always need to share a table with someone.

Wow! I now know what all the hype is about in this restaurant.
After a 5 min wait we ordered a R8 and a R7. We ate the R8 well before anyone could take a picture of it. R7 is a non-spicy pork bone broth, R8 is a spicy sauce that is oh-so-mouth-watering I really liked the way the egg was somewhere in between hard boiled and soft boiled. The broth was the right thickness and incredibly tasty.
I don't know what that thin red spicy topping is, but it adds a delicious kick to the soup.
When I got my noodles they were a little hard, but after about 1 minute everything was just right. They use a digital stamp card for iPhone! It's buy 10 Ramen get 1 free! I really love the app.

Overall great experience. I'm really looking forward to my next visit here!

Went here one day with a friend. Luckily, we were able to get in after about 5 minutes wait (it was 6:30 p.m.)

I ordered the spicy pork bone ramen and my friend ordered the original pork bone ramen.

It’s a pretty small but smart place. All customers had to sit on the same long table.

The ramen arrived extremely quickly, in less than 2 minutes, as we were able to place our orders while we were waiting outside. Pretty efficient service.

According to him, the original pork ramen is almost as good as the one in Ippudo.

My spicy ramen was pretty good – the noodle was of medium texture (not too hard nor too soft). The char siu was of good quality (about 6mm thick with fat evenly distributed). The soup base is slightly salty with spicy miso. It’s pretty thick. It’d taste much better if there was more garlic in the base.

I recommend putting in extra spicy miso provided by the shop. I still find the spicy ramen at Ippudo better.

Overall a pretty good experience. I will come here again to try out their original ramen if there isn’t a long queue.

After Butao and Yukitei, i am growing to love Jap Ramen. Jap Ramen to me before was nothing but Ajisen Ramen, but now I can see why people could get so crazy about them. I have also tried Ramen Santouka (山頭火), Ippei-An and 魔麵 etc, but I still love Butao the most. G. says there is another store she reckons is better than Butan in Gough St. , better go try it sometimes.So back to Daruma Ramen. Last time I came at 3pm and their soup was sold out, this time I grew smart and came at 2.15pm when there is less traffic and the ramen house is still open. To my surprise, the restaurant was almost full house! There was a couple leaving by the time I arrived, so there was seats available. The restaurant is pretty small in general, the seating is rather packed.

The service is good and caring, the server would offer a change of seat once a nicer seating is available. Other than that, the "cup of tea" that Daruma offers is actually a cup of cold water! This literally save me from the hell hot sun out there.

Daruma House Special (達磨一品豚骨拉麵) $78I ordered the most basic Daruma Pork Ramen which ranked 1st in popularity on the menu. There was 1 pork, 3 braised pork belly, a brunch of black fungus, Mentaiko and garnished with some seaweed, sesame and sharp shredded red peppers on top. Quite a nice looking ramen bowl I reckon.

Broth - The first thing to taste have to be the broth with everything else untouched. The soup was thick and strong in taste but not as slimy as Yukitei Ramen. After mixing the Mentaiko in, there will also be some spiciness at certain spoons which was yum too. The broth was palatable but was also very greasy. There would be a layer of mucous layer formed if left untouched for a while. This totally disgusted me, but I only figured it out after I polished more than half of the bowl.Noodles - The noodles is white thin ramen which is of my liking! Although they do not ask for how chewy I want my ramen to be, they managed to make it chewy enough.

Pork - I had the pork belly first and found it extremely rough in texture even with fats attached on it. The Cha Siu on the other hand was very tender and yum! I was trying to fish another slice but realised there was only 1 slice per bowl.

Egg - The egg yok is nicely running and the egg had a nice color outer skin. It was quite tasty but the seasoning was a bit too salty.

******************************

Overall the broth and the noodles were both tasty but not the pork which is also pretty important for a bowl of ramen. Although I was put off by the greasy mucous layer forming from the broth, I would like to try the spicy ramen next time, also to check if the bad quality pork is an one-off thing or not. Despite the food, the hospitality is satisfying. One downside about the ramen here is they do not offer variety e.g. ramen's chewiness or how strong the broth, etc as other ramen stores did. Anyhow, its worth trying the ramen in here.

This is my second time to try this restaurant and hope they can have some improvement.

Our arrival time was at around 1215pm and got the table after 20 minutes.

The ramen itself is not HOT at all, it happened not the first time.

The soup base of the ramen has no taste at all. I am not sure whether they have mixed it with extra water and I doubt if they have boiled it with pork and ribs for more than 10 hours everyday

The BBQ Pork is okay but very small portion

The texture of the noodle itself taste okay but the overall quality is very bad

I won't go to this restaurant anytime.

To miss the big queue, head there early if you want to try. The menu is limited but hey that is their speciality, so unless you want ramen with pork do not bother visiting. The place is small, and I mean small, so if you are claustrophobic and like to sit and eat for a while to chill, word of advice do not go there. The soup base is pretty good although pretty fattening. if grease puts you off then this not the dish for you, but to be honest it is the fats that makes the dish good. The ramen is just normal. Go for the normal soup base, the hot spicy soup base is mediocre, it has a sour undertone. Overall not wow but definitely good in a satisfying way.

Worth a try if you want a tasty bowl of noodles.

this was my second attempt. first time, the queue was long so we changed to the fried egg with cha siu rice.

this time, unexpectedly they were open 30mins earlier, so when we arrived they're already full; needed to wait for 30mins...

noodle and soup base were nice. i ordered the spicy one, next time, will try the original one.

Bit of a wait which I don't usually do, however was relatively manageable, a few Asahis from nearby 7-11 makes time pass a lot smoother with company

Went for R8.
Compared to other ramen places in HK I've been to, the soup base here is pretty authentic. Completely unhealthy in fattiness and saltiness but is the real deal. You don't eat this stuff for health reasons - comments of it being too much are way off base in my opinion, ramen in Japan is not about clear broth like Chinese soup noodles - this stuff is nothing compared to Ippudo which congeals immediately if you let it cool
Quality of the pork was to be commended, the noodles were good as well. Haven't been to the 2 hour wait place in Central, but this one takes the crown of best ramen in HK for me for now... that being said, I'm good for now, don't do well with waiting in lines and the place only has seating for 18.

I would like to make my comments simple:
-The soup base was very thick, salty and greasy but did not taste or smell pork bone, so it was very artificial. (It is normal and would be quite tantalizing that the surface of the soup is with a bit of oil floating on top, but their soup was just packed with grease)
- The pork bone+soy sauce soup base was terrible, couldn't even taste the soy sauce, it was just a darkened version of the pork bone soup
- Noodle was acceptable
- 豚角煮 was neither soft nor tender, and it tasted very bland, may be it was the soup that tasted too strong which killed off the flavour of the pork
-义烧 was a thin piece of very lean pork, it was dipped in the soup, and once you picked it up, it went into pieces.
Overall, very disappointed, below professional standard. 3 out of 10.

Date dined : 6th August 2010

Food 2 叉燒豬骨湯拉麵, 1 菠菜, extra 溏心蛋

Taste 叉燒豬骨湯拉麵 - as we ordered two ramen, we had mixture of pork belly and roast pork ( As you can choose from pork belly or roast pork) I actually prefered the pork belly. At first I thought it would be very fat, but it had no fat at all, just seem like a thick slice of roast pork. Was definately more tasty than the thin piece of fatty roast pork. I would recommend choosing the pork belly. The ramen comes with 2 piece seaweed, meat (roast pork or pork belly), chinese fungus, spring onion, little sesame and half a boiled egg. The soup base is definately very tasty and I have never tasted a ramen soup so rich in pork bone taste. It was rather creamy and thick. But it was awfully salty. I only had a spoonful and found it so salty I could not continue to eat without drinking water. The ramen was thin ramen and too soft, not al dente enough. I did not know what the red stuff was on top but did not taste good either. The egg was good but could be better if had more taste.

Appetizer- Spinach- I ordered it after seeing it was $15, but it was definately not worth that 15 dollars even. Was hardly any spinach. Was tasteless. Had sauce on the plate but it was like separate from the spinach. Was definitely not worth it

Environment It is a little ramen restaurant with 4-5 tables, probably 20 ppl max. Really crowdy and small. Was not comfortable sitting so close to other people and hearing everybody's private conversation. Wanted to finish eating and get out of there fast!. I did quite like their interior. Wooden tables and chair. Simplicity.

Services: There was a woman giving out the ticket, she seemed like she knew what she was doing. Then later on a man came out calling numbers n kept asking wht our names was, trying match it to his sheet. Then through the door, we saw the woman n the man discussing and pointing out to us. Then again he asked us for our name we put down. Then bit later came ut pointed at us and said you are next. Leading us to think it is ready so we walked in then he said no not yet. Then later he said same thing. He did that about 5 times. Then finally we got seated. There was a 1 waitress and 1 waiter serving. No smile from both of them. Seemed to be impatient especially when taking order, no manners at all. The waiter doesnt seem to respond when you call out to him even though it is sucha TINY shop. They seemed to be very disorganized, maybe a this restaurant is still new

OVERALL: I have always been a fan of 1 ramen restaurant which is Yokozuna. They are reasonable price with HIGH QUALITY ramen. So I am biased as I will comparing this restaurant to that. But my bill came up to 173 hk dollars for 2 bowl of ramen and 1 small tiny appetizer. The ramen was soggy and small portion. There wasnt much vegetable in it, the soup was WAYYYYYYYYYY too salty. Paying for that price and for that service, not worth for a bowl of ramen. It is better than ramen place out there, as their soup is good. But not for that price!