Ramen Kureha     拉麵來  

I came here for lunch alone, the waiter and manager were very helpful to explain. I had the spicy fireball ramen and when it came, I thought the soup will be red but it's a nice surprise that the spicy fireball when I broke and stirred was spiced up and coloured the soup red. The noodle was perfect, broth thick and tasty, the pork slices was delicious.
I really enjoy the decor is so Japanese! I will come back again when there was no long queue on the door!

This is my favorite place for Japanese noodles. The decor feels like Japan. The service very very quick - the noodle arrived within a few minutes if ordering despite the place was packed. The taste of the soup is thick & strong. The noodles cooked just right. I also enjoy adding the side marinates veggies that came on the table. We were in & out within 20 mins!!

Came here for the white truffle ramen which I had read about on my friend's blog. No wait time, so that was good!

Ordered a chicken and tomato soup parmesan ramen and the white truffle tonkotsu ramen. I have to say, it was really just average. the chicken and tomato soup was refreshing, but I didn't like the tonkotsu soup base flavour. Their soup was thick enough, but there was a funny flavour to it which I can't put my finger on. There was a teaspoon of truffle, which was a nice addition as expected. I liked the noodles - they were the bouncy curly kind, not the smooth ones you get at Butao or Ippudo. However, the char siu was really not so good. I like my char siu soft and just slightly fatty. This one was pretty hard and even had a bone in one piece.

This place has two good points - the truffle ramen concept, and the bouncy noodles. However, overall I would say these are nice additions to have, and are not enough to save a bowl of ramen if you can't get the soup and the char siu right. Service was friendly and I think the shop had a cleaner feeling than Butao, but with all the other ramen shops to try, I probably wouldn't come back.

Always seen this place with long line ups, so went early to wait for it to open (6pm). There were still quite a few people waiting with me, and by the time I finished there was a line up outside.

「木」- 白松露野菌湯拉麵 ($108)
- very rich soup.
- noodles was average, thin
- NOT worth the price though. 火炙叉燒 ($23) & 糖心蛋 ($15)
- the 火炙叉燒 was better than the one in the soup. The slight burn melted a bit of the pork fat and increased its flavour
- the 糖心蛋 was DELICIOUS !! The egg white was cooked with a slight soy sauce flavour, and the yolk was raw. Worth a try.

This is the only ramen place (that I've tried) that can be compared to 豚王 (Butao Ramen). But I prefer Butao's variety. The environment was quite nice (very Japanese feel) and not as squished as Butao. Both places use a very rich pork bone soup base, and the noodles are similar. They also have excellent eggs - the BEST I've ever eaten. The egg was more "perfect" at Butao though.

We went there in normal weekday, thus we can't try to highly recommended ramen. For normal weekdays, not many choices can be chosen. I choose the "金" ramen, which is 豬骨soup. The taste is okay, but not superior. There are 2 slices of pork in there and quite fatty. I chose the "hard" noodle and the texture is okay. For the egg, the taste is okay but it costs $15, which I think quite expensive.In overall, I would try it again if walk by around, but will not go there intentionally.

My sis was having ramen cravings one day so I accompanied her to try out this new place in Tai Hang!

I was happy to find a Chicken broth ramen on the menu. Turns out, we were very lucky to arrive just in time for their last bowls of limited edition signature ramen and chicken broth ramen*~

The soup in the signature ramen was wayyy to heavy for me but I'm guessing Butao lovers would really appreciate it.

What came as a pleasant surprise was the chicken broth ramen. It was super delicious! Despite it being also quite heavy, I would recommend it to all ramen lovers who would like to try something different!

Many friends have tried this place with great comments. In order to beat the lunch hour traffic. My wife and I went at around 4pm as afternoon tea. The shop is small with only 15-20 highchair seatings with open kitchen. 3 cooks and 3 waiters were present.

The menu was very simple so we decided to take the signature pork bone soup and chick collagen soup base with regular texture noodles and extra chives and seasoning oil. Unlimited supply of raw garlic is also a plus for garlic lovers.First thing to do is of course tried the soup. And wow, what a intensive taste from the slow cooked soup base. The texture of the pork bone soup is thick and sweet but not oily at all. Then I tried my wife's chicken collagen, the texture is also thick and sweet but totally different from the pork. It tasted like a whole chicken was used for that small bowl of ramen.

We didn't order any drink and ended up down all the soup. Such a nice treat to the stomach!

I have tried many ramen places and this is definitely my top 3 choices. I can't wait to go and try the rest of the menu.

Thanks to the food comment by other food reviewers, I realized the existence of yet another potentially high caliber ramen shop located at Tai Hang. It seems that they have two signature broths, thick pork bone broth as well as chicken broth. I wasn't too interested in Kureha at first as I'm only really interested in the spicy ramen.

I realized from the photograph that they have an interestingly named ramen - "Super Spicy Bomb Pork Bone Ramen". I thus decided to aim for this one and ditched my colleagues for Friday lunch at "Kitchen M" (which I'm not at all interested in - I recommended my wife to try it out with her friends instead )

As I arrived at Tai Hang at 1:00 p.m., I noticed that it was lunchtime for nearby schools and offices. There were queues for most Vietnamese restaurants along the road and other restaurants which served local cuisines (but not those which served European cuisines though). At this point, I was getting a bit worried about the potential length of the queue. Surprisingly, there was no queue at "Daruma"!

Once I've arrived, I noticed about 4-5 persons waiting outside Kureha. They seemed to be a group. I entered and told the staff that I required a table for one. Luckily, about 5-6 minutes wait, I got a seat at the very end of the shop. This place was a lot less crowded than ButaO. They had about 6-7 bar seats at the counter and about 2-3 tables for 4. The air-conditioning was a lot better than most ramen shop as well. I think it's because the kitchen and the eating area were separated by a huge glass, as you could see from the following photo: Well, I suppose you wouldn't be able to see the glass anyway.

The restaurant was so much more insulated (somewhat similar to Ippeian at Mirama, TST) and was quite cool. This is crucial when the weather is hot. The interior was actually similar to the shop front, which was the Japanese European fusion - the "Showa" style (昭和: 1926 - 1989). I quite like this nostalgic design.

The menu:Without doubt, I choose the "Super Spicy Bomb Pork Bone Ramen". I choose normal noodle, spring onions with an extra portion of grilled char siu.

After a short wait, which was about 5 minutes only, the ramen, char siu and a red coloured dish arrived. I'm quite pleased that the "Bomb" (with a section of a spring onion or chive as the "fuse") was served separately from the pork bone broth. This was good because you could try their signature pork bone broth alone and control how spicy you wished your ramen to be.

First, about the broth, this was just the normal pork bone flavour but it was already quite strong. Definitely stronger than ButaO, Ippudo, Tatsuya and most ramen shops. "Hide-chan Ramen" comes the closest. One way to imagine the taste might be this: it's similar to the thickest pork bone broth you get at a Cantonese style hotpot, after the meal, times two.

I thought the taste of the broth was quite interesting but wasn't extremely excited by it. I think I prefer a less overwhelming taste than this.

As you could see, the size of the noodle was quite small for the price:I could almost put the whole noodle cake on my spoon. This could not be compared with the hearty sizes of Ippeian, Hide-chan, ButaO and, particularly, Hakodate. The noodles themselves were the Kyushu style noodle and made by Kureha. The texture was quite chewy and harder than average, somewhat like a barely cooked egg noodle. It was not bad and matched well with the pork bone broth.

About the Char Siu, the Ramen came with two pieces of normal Char Siu. The normal Char Siu - not the grilled one- had quite a substantial bit of fat on the side and was about 1 cm think (I.e. quite substantial). I think the meat was not as tender as I'd like it to be and was not aromatic. However, this was still more tender than the two pieces of extra grilled char siu. I'd skip the Char Siu and order an additional noodle cake instead. The Char Siu at Buta O and Daruma were much much better.

Finally, I bombed my ramen with the "super spicy bomb". As with ButaO, this was a "NikuMiso", i.e. pork marinated with miso, soy sauce, mirin and/or honey. However, as stated in my review of ButaO, the NikuMiso at ButaO turned the pork ramen into a bowl of Dan Dan Mien, believe it or not. The niku miso here was not nutty and was marinated with a lot more dark soy sauce. It was more solid in general and almost tasted like the Taiwanese soy sauce marinated meat (Lou Yuk 魯肉) but with a lot of Korean "small" chilli powder, i.e. the finely grounded chilli powder that gives a strong but very short aftertaste. It's spicier and saltier than ButaO in general. However, it wasn't super spicy. Readers who are used to Korean cuisines will find it quite mild.

Conclusion:

Service was fine. The staff were quite friendly and efficient. Nothing to complain about. The environment was quite cool, the temperature and the interior design. It's not too crowded (by ramen shop standards).

All in all, the nikumiso of Kureha mixed well with it's strong pork bone broth. Interesting but nothing spectacular. Perhaps spicy ramen made with nikumiso is just not my cup of tea. The quality of the ramen was quite good but too small given the price.

I'd give it a miss if you're into char siu or spicy ramen with a kick but may be worth a try for fans of strong pork bone broth.