Tohenboku Ramen

The first place in which I ate a version of ramen that did not include pork or pork based broth of any sort was in Vancouver at Marutama Ramen.  I haven't gotten a chance to blog about my trip which happened last year, because of the sheer number of places I ate it, it would take a super long time time write up a single blog about it.  I promise it's coming.  It will be done before the summer ends.

I was really looking forward to some chicken based broth ramen because it was very good at Marutama.  It can't be that hard right?  I make chicken broth at home all the time.  I do cheat out of convenience sometimes, but it never tastes as good as the homemade stuff.  I ordered the shio original Tohenboku ramen.  The husband ordered garlicky Tohenboku ramen.  They had a special at the time, not sure if it's offered now, that if you follow them on twitter, you can get a free topping on your ramen.  So the husband got an order of pork belly added to his ramen.  We also got an order of karaage to share.

My husband loves karaage, and tends to order it whenever given the opportunity to.  However, we were disappointed in this one.  The karaage was not crispy.  It wasn't soggy either, but the outside was just soft.

Karaage

Visually the ramen didn't look very appealing to me.  My soup had already partly congealed when it arrived, so I had to remove the 'skin'.  And the chicken, looked like headcheese.  It didn't have much taste to it, so it was not properly seasoned, even though you can clearly see pepper in the pictures.  The broth was weak in flavour.  Which makes me wonder what they actually use to make the broth.  Unless we went 'too late' at night and they added water to the broth.  Thats what it tasted like to me.  My husband's ramen was slightly better because the garlic seasoning added additional flavour which mine was lacking.  The noodles were cooked well, so no complaint there.  My egg was a little 'roughed' up, it was missing part of the white.  Which is a sign that the eggs are not particularly fresh. The pork belly tasted extra fatty because there was no charing of the pork.  I hate soggy pork fat.

Shio Original Tohenboku Ramen

Garlicky Tohenboku Ramen

Not sure I would make the trip to Tohenboku again.  The flavours just weren't there, which I found shocking because there are so many ramen restaurants out there competition wise.

Tohenboku Ramen
261 Queen St. W,
Toronto, ON
416-596-8080

Hours:  Monday - Saturday 11am - 12am (midnight)
             Sunday 11am - 10:30pm

http://www.touhenboku.ca