Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Aoba Ramen - Ion

Aoba ramen has had the most incredibly long queues since Ion opened, and the queues are mad during the peak periods. Finally managed to get a seat (without queueing) on a Sunday evening, and got to try my ramen. Hailing from Hokkaido, it serves 3 different kinds of soup bases namely shoyu, Shio and Miso.
Frankly, there's nothing spectacular about it - the soup base is rather insipid, salty and lacking the richness and robustness of how good ramen soup should taste. The ramen noodles are passable, bordering on soggy (but not quite there yet). Service wasn't too bad - a few blur waiters - but at least they give free iced water, cos the Green Tea costs $1.90++.
I had the Miso Corn Ramen, which came with a dollop of butter, some sweet juicy corn kernals, 2 slices of charsiew as well as a piece of seaweed. The soup base was slightly garlicky, oily and sweetish because of the butter.
The Shio (Salt) Seafood Ramen had a nicer taste than Miso, so I think if I do come back, I'll be having either the shio soup base, or the shoyu (though I don't really like the shoyu base since it's clear).
I much prefer Noodle House Ken's ramen, probably because it's tweaked to our local taste or Tampopo's famous black pig ramen, which has an incredibly rich soup base. I'm not sure if they boil the soup themselves, but I'll be heading over to my favourite Tampopo at Wisma the next time a ramen craving hits when I'm in town.

Omg I was checking out ramen on wiki, and it says that Tonkotsu is LARD?!?!?! I've been thinking that it's pork bones for the longest time... shall reconsider the next time i see tonkotsu...

3 comments:

Emma said...

hey michelle,

spot on with your comments. i didnt like aoba ramen at all...most horrible of all, the egg was fully cooked and turning blue! menya shinchan and santouka have very good soup base and my favourite (for the bounciness of the noodles) is miharu.

m said...

Hello Emma - fortunately my egg was half cooked - no bluish/greyish yolk! I find menya too salty, but santouka is also one of my faves. can't wait to try Ippudo tho I bet the queues will be horrendously long

Emma said...

Check out Travelling Hungryboy's blog - he's already been to Ippudo but didn't find it great. I might go when the feeding frenzy has died down a few months later. Heh.