Let the Ramen Wars continue! In the last round, Mensho Tokyo was winning, but this week, three new contenders are vying for that top spot for best ramen in San Francisco. How will Hinodeya Ramen Bar, Slurp Noodle Bar and Ramenwell fare?
1. Hinodeya Ramen Bar
I decided to try out Hinodeya as they specialize in Dashi ramen, and it seems like a lighter, nicer alternative to the heaviness that Tonkotsu ramen can bring sometimes. Plus, I’m usually a fan of dashi in other foods, so it seemed like a good contender for Ramen Wars. I headed over for lunch and had the house ramen with a dashi broth, chashu pork, a marinated egg and homemade wheat noodles. The bowl looked fantastic when it arrived. The broth was actually a bit on the light side for me as I’ve had dashi broths before and usually it’s a bit more flavorful. They do have jars of garlic and onion with chili and umami paste available, so I added a bit of umami paste (basically dried fish) and quite a bit of the garlic and onion. It definitely boosted the broth quite a bit. The noodles were a bit chewy and unusual at first, but they really grew on me. In fact, the entire bowl kind of grew on me the more I ate it. But I don’t know if that’s because the umami paste finally worked its way through the soup. The egg was also really nicely cooked and the soy marination really came through as a flavor on the palate as I finished it.
2. Slurp Noodle Bar
If you are an active reader of the blog, you may be thinking to yourself that I’ve already been to Slurp Ramen, and that I really enjoyed it. It turns out there are two different places to obtain Ramen in San Francisco with the name Slurp, and this one is different as they have more types of noodles soups (like Laksa), and it’s found in the Castro. I decided to give it a try with the Krazy Spicy Seafood Ramen. I do love a spicy ramen, so I was keen to give it a try. It’s a spicy bacon-tonkotsu broth (whatever that is) with kimchi, squid, prawns, clams and mussels. The broth was really flavorful, and not too crazy spicy, but spicier than many other ramens I’ve had. At first I wasn’t a fan of the texture of the noodles, but they definitely softened up a lot after sitting in the broth for awhile. The prawns were quite soft and tasty, but sadly, the rest of the seafood was overcooked (and kept overcooking the longer it sat in the hot broth.) It was quite tasty though, so I’m sure I’d find myself back in there if I were in the area and wanting to give something else a try.
3. Ramenwell
In Part 5 of Ramen Wars, I went to Ken Ken Ramen, and while I rather enjoyed it, it pretty much shut down right around the time of posting. However, a new ramen joint moved into the same location, and they recently opened, so I returned to give Ramenwell a try. They have quite a small menu offering tonkotsu, paitan and tantanmen ramens if you enjoy meat, or a mushroom ramen if you don’t. Now, I don’t usually go for tonkotsu because I do often find it too thick and fatty, but they get their pork from 4505 Burgers and BBQ, and I was dying to give the smoked pork a try with the ramen, so against my better judgement (and against my preference of tantanmen), I ordered the tonkotsu ramen. It did look pretty amazing when it came out, and they served it with some pickled vegetables on the side specifically to help cut through the fatty richness of the tonkotsu broth. The broth was a bit of the fatty side, but I’ve had worse, and the black garlic oil on top did help somewhat. But what really helped were the delicious and briny pickles. The noodles were also really tasty and not too chewy. The pork was tender and really smoky, and really did help enhance the ramen to a new level. The egg was an onsen egg and not a marinated egg. While I like both, I definitely would prefer a marinated egg. But the bowl of ramen was incredibly tasty, and it was only $15 (including the egg) so it was not as overpriced as many places as well.
Winner: Mensho Tokyo
While the ramen from Ramenwell was excellent and far surpassed what I could have expected from a bowl of Tonkotsu ramen, I think the thick, umami-filled broth from Mensho Tokyo still is my favorite. Slurp Noodle Bar and Hinodeya were also incredibly tasty and are places that I would be happy to go back to for a warm bowl of noodles. We’ll see if that amazing broth from Mensho Tokyo can hold up to the next three contenders in the next round!
Ranking:
1. Mensho Tokyo
2. Ramenwell
3. Nojo Ramen Tavern
4. Iza Ramen
5. Kan Ramen
6. Slurp Ramen
7. Ippudo
8. Slurp Noodle Bar
9. Hinodeya Ramen Bar
10. The Ramen Bar
11. Ajisen Ramen
12. Marufuku
13. Ushio Ramen
14. Coco’s Ramen
15. Katana-Ya Ramen
16. R&B Cafe
17. Yo-Kai Express
18. Ramen Underground
19. Kiramachi Ramen
20. Orenchi Beyond
Wow, you had a great run with these three! And all of them are so different from each other. Dying to try all three!
I did! I made some excellent Ramen choices!