Being great fans of ramen, how could we miss out on this new ramen store in the Shatin area ? This restaurant certainly looked as though it was having a nice start, with great popularity judging from the impressive lines queuing outside the store; fortunately we made a reservation before hand. Superfically, things certainly seemed ok; for instance, there was the cold wheat tea which ought to be served at every "authentic" ramen store; there were those standard choices of soup bases for the noodles on the menu, namely shio, soy sauce, miso, as well as hot and spicy; and of course they use fine, standard ramen here, definitely not those horrible stuff which tasted like instant noodles, and they were cooked just right to give the correct tangy texture. We tried the
soft bone pork and chashu with tonkosu ramen (叉燒豬軟骨豬骨湯拉麵) and the
beef ribs with shoyu ramen (美國牛肋肉極上醬油拉麵). The ramen arrived in big bowls with the nori served separately. Toppings included standard fare like sweet corn, menma (dried bamboo shoots), negi (green onion) and half-cooked egg; both the ramen and the toppings came in medium to small portions only. Serving temperature was ok. For the soup base, we would favour the tonkosu one, as it was quite rich and tasty, and definitely better than those versions usually served elsewhere; and although it was a bit oily, it was still perfectly acceptable.The shoyu one was less impressive, for apart from the "saltiness" it was rather lacking in depth of flavour, and hence we did not find it very special. For the ingredients, the best item by far was the soft bone pork, being cooked to a tender texture; the chashu was too fatty to our taste, and resembled pieces of pork belly meat rather than chashu; the beef ribs were downright disappointing, for they were dried and overcooked, and lacked the usual beefy flavour and texture - in fact, it must be classified as one of the worst "beef rib" I had tried recently !
Would suggest to avoid this item if possible. Besides ramen, we also ordered a
crab roe salad (ok, nothing special) and a
mixed skewers set, with items like beef tongue, chicken wings etc.. Unfortunately, the skewers were also a bit disappointing as most of them were overcooked and dry, with the beef tongue being possibly the only exception; but then the beef tongue was not adequately seasoned with salt and tasted a bit bland to us as well. For dessert, we tried the
Hokkaido milk ice cream with red bean and dumplings. The dumplings were fine in taste, with black sesame filling inside, but unfortunately as it was served warm its presence made the ice cream melt faster than it should; the ice cream itself was also not special, with not much milk flavour at all, and tasted like ordinary vanilla ice cream to us
Service was barely acceptable for such a small shop. In summary, it is evident that the shop owners here try to convey a feeling of "authenticity" to its patrons, and it is certainly a nice try; unfortunately, there is still a long way to go for this shop, especially in terms of the quality of the food. Wouldn't recommend a special trip just to try out its food, but if you happen to be around, it is not a particularly bad choice for lunch or dinner.
