Hokkaido Ramen Santouka

My friend told me that this brand of ramen is quite delicious. He tried it for the first time in San Diego, and after finishing it, he kept recommending it to me. So this time, I came to the store in Irvine to pay homage!

The ordering process for the meal is very simple; there are actually four different soup bases for ramen. You can choose regular ramen or ramen with chashu 🍜, and then there are some additional toppings you can select. Personally, I found it a little strange that the egg 🥚 they offer as an add-on is a boiled egg, rather than the soft-boiled egg typically provided with ramen! The other toppings are rather ordinary, nothing particularly good or bad, so you can choose according to your preferences!

I chose the:
❤️ Spicy Miso Chashu Ramen

Perhaps because the number of people who know about this place in the U.S. is not as many as in Asia, even though they can really handle spicy food 🌶️, some people who claim they can eat spicy actually don't handle it that well. It seems like the level of spiciness in the U.S. is reduced by half. When I was eating this bowl of ramen, I initially thought it would make my nose run a little, but unexpectedly, it only had the aroma of chili without real spiciness in the taste! However, the overall broth still paired nicely, and if I had to say, it has a more foreign flavor, with a somewhat saltier taste! The noodles were quite good, overall very balanced—not too soft or too hard, and I felt the portion size was also quite sufficient!

Overall, I think it’s pretty decent. Although there’s no need to make a special trip here to dine, if I feel like having ramen, it would definitely be one of my options. But if I want a spicier taste, I might have to choose ramen from another place!