Santouka, San Jose, CA

I miss the 24 hour ramen all the time in Tokyo.  Hardly any are open after 2pm in they bay area.  Tough for someone routinely overslept! (Sigh)..

But, the food court in Mitsuwa is always open in the afternoon! lol.  I was here 2pm today and there is barely a line for Santouka (山頭火).  Unfortunately Shio ramen was out of soup, which made me switched to miso.  Add an boiled egg on the side.

Although it is thought to be fast service, a normal 15-20 minute wait was normal at santouka (maybe only I am getting that treatment? ha).  In the bowl there are chashu, green onion, bamboo shoot and the extra egg I ordered.  The soup is more of a pork bone (tonkotsu) based with miso boiled in.  Although the soup is not as dense and flavorful as some other ramen places, it is easy to take in and the miso flavor would slowly takes effect.  The chashu's flavor is compatible with the soup as well with the soup flavor more dominent.  The less saltiness and the taste of this bowl might be tailored toward of an international taste.

Wanted also to post the $1 bucks oyster happy hour at the B in SF.  I did wish the oyster was bigger though. lol..

----------------------
Santouka
Mitsuwa Marketplace
675 Saratoga Ave
San Jose, CA 95129
http://www.santouka.co.jp


大きな地図で見る

B Restaurant
Yerba Buena Gardens - Upper Terrace
720 Howard St
San Francisco, CA 94103
http://www.bsanfrancisco.com

大きな地図で見る

Dohatsuten, Palo Alto, CA

Peer pressure is hard to avoid! but, when you are hungry, just go with it!

Based on previous 2-3 experiences, my feeling toward this ramen place was more toward below neutral.  Luckily this time I was prepared with reading the comments on yelp.  6 of us came in around 8pm to Dohatsuten in Palo Alto and I have ordered Tai-niku ramen with tonkotsu soup.

The taste was more than OK in my mind this time around! Although the pork bone taste was not as strong as the other shops in the bay, it was good enough and identifiable.  The noodle is the thin egg noodle which is similar to the shio ramen noodle used at other shops.

The pork belly is thick and hard to chew unless it is soaked with the soup.  It would be nice to get some fat on there! Such a meat lover..

After this experience, I would like to give them another try and come back to try their tsukemen.  My colleague ordered it and said was good.  Also, they are so close to work place. lol.

-----------------------
Dohatsuten
799 San Antonio Rd
Palo Alto, CA 94303
http://www.yelp.com/biz/dohatsuten-palo-alto


大きな地図で見る

Ringer Hut, San Jose, CA

Champion vs Champon. I cant tell the difference..

Japanese Champon started in Nagasaki, which is the very southern tip of Japan.  At that time, Nagasaki has many of foreigners studying or doing business.  Champon is actually started from a Chinese Fukien student who misses this own culture and food.  Because Champon gathers many different ingredient, including veggies which is very expensive in Japan.

Ringer hut is a chain from Japan and Champon is one of the star item.  With a high Yelp rating, I ordered champon and yakimeshi!

Yakimeshi is very tasty! All the taste from the shoyu and ingredient is soaked in.  On the other hand,  although the small champon is very tasty as well, I felt a little bit discomfort with the spikes after sipping the soup.  But the amount of extra ingredient is a pleasant surprise.  At the end I just cant help myself to order.....

PUDDING!!!!! So good!! The caramel layer on the top has that solid layer to differentiate itself!











-----------------------------
Ringer Hut
1072 Saratoga Ave
San Jose, CA 95129
http://www.ringerhutamerica.com


View Larger Map

Suzu Noodle House, San Francisco, CA

Japantown is where Japanese culture started to flourish and it is currently one of the must go tourist sites in San Francisco.  Has to be good ramen in Japan town, where it took me to Suzu Noodle house on the first floor of the Japantown building.

Some odd reason I was craving for kakuni (fat pork meat).  I actually did ask for Kakuni ramen with Shio ramen but they claim that it is better with shoyu.  No! I pay for what I get! lol...

Shio Ramen with Kakuni on the side! I actually came here couple times before and have fallen in love with the shio ramen here.  It is based of chicken bone with fish broth.  It matched very well with the chewy egg noodle.  You actually have to eat the noodle instead of just swallow it.  The kakuni is marinated very well with the heavy soy sauce and sugar.  Fat part is completely juicy.  I did actaully put the kakuni in the soup and still taste fantastic!

I would like to say that I like the clear, straight forward taste from Suzu.  Katana-ya in SF actually have the very similar ramen but the atmosphere in Suzu is a lot better and cleaner.  Plus plus!

---------------------------
Suzu Noodle House
1825 Post St
(between Webster St & Fillmore St) 
San Francisco, CA 94115
http://www.yelp.com/biz/suzu-noodle-house-san-francisco


View Larger Map

Orenchi, Santa Clara, CA & Miyabitei, San Jose, CA

My crave on curry udon was meet today!  well, kind of.  It reminded me of Shinagawa 品川 station's udon shop in tokyo.  Main three words, hot, cheap and fast.  The only difference is that lot of time to spare here.

The place is called Miyabitei in Mitsuwa market in San Jose. All their food is very cheap and big portion.  The curry udon is actually 5 dollars a piece!  There are actually beef chunk in the bowl.  Although the beef is not as chewy, sometimes is very hard to chew, it is what the price is.  Would be nice to have a bowl of rice for the rest of the curry sauce, but instead.. I got.... 

Sushi! lol. 

Of course, I would also like to write about Orenchi the second time on my blog.  I do believe that they have the best tsukemen in the bay area so far I have tasted.  The soup is dense and full of flavor of pork bone.  I ordered tsukemen with extra noodle, egg and tokyo negi.  So hungry! 

The way to eat tsukemen is to dip the noodle in the dipping soup, which should be very dense in flavor.  The other topping can also be dipped.  What I liked to do is to put all the topping in the soup first. lol.

The noodle with the soup is the closest taste I had comparing to the ramen experience in Japan.  After dipping the noodle in the soup, the soup flavor would dominate.  The tokyo negi would just add to the texture! yum. 

At the end, if you would like to enjoy the soup, you can ask for wari soup (割スープ）which can be pour into the dipping soup.  The wari soup here is actually white pork bone soup which matched perfectly.

The only complaint about Orenchi I have is that their service is ways slow.  I do not blame them since there are only 4 employee taking care of the whole store.  If you are going make sure to save sometime to complete your meal! 

------------------

Orenchi ramen

3540 Homestead Rd
Santa Clara, CA 95051

http://www.yelp.com/biz/orenchi-ramen-santa-clara

View Larger Map

Miyabitei
675 Saratoga Ave
San Jose, CA 95129

View Larger Map

Ramen Tenma, San Jose, CA

Who does not like Okinawa?  the Japanese version of Hawaii? But what does Okinawa soba tastes like?  From wiki, the main point is flat thin noodle, and the base is tonkotsu white soup.  I have visited Tenma Ramen today to taste Okinawa Bonito Soba.

The Bonito Flake on the top is said to be "top class"! It is full of flavor!  I did read somewhere that some people would flake out looking at the self moving bonito flake. Why?? it does not have eyes and a mouth to eat you! lol. 

The soup is more soy sauce based.  After sipping it, it is very smooth with a light bonito flavor.  The corn and the green onion actually did not present too much flavor.








Senaさん the owner is so nice that he gave me a bowl of rice on service.  I would also recommend to put the red ginger with the soup to produce a better texture and excitement!  Next time I would like to try the ribs here!

I would like to present to all Cocola Bakery! I came in and got a cappuccino and a tart! It looks good, feels good, and taste good!

They are a more high end patisseries with both cakes and pastry.  The other best sellers are sandwichs!  You can check it out in stanford shopping center, valleyfair or stoneridge mall! Use your FiveStars card!

-------------------------
Ramen Tenma
487 Saratoga Ave
San Jose, CA 95129
http://ramentenma.com/RamenTenma/Welcome.html


大きな地図で見る

Cocola Bakery
660 Stanford Shopping Center
Ste E715
Palo Alto, CA 94304
http://www.cocolabakery.com/


大きな地図で見る

Yu-Raku, San Mateo, CA

Chuka cuisine(中華料理) is Japanese style Chinese food. It does make sense living in Japan to hear this term.  I did search on the difference between chuka cuisine and Chinese cuisine and the result is that there are no difference.  I would put chuka cuisine similar to a black guy opening up a chinese food store in japan.  hard to imagine..

It is also hard to imagine how Chuka cuisine would survive in a chinese dominant bay area.  In my surprise, it was good bowl of ramen that I had!  The place is call Yu-raku (遊楽) in San Mateo.  Parking is hard but there is a parking garage 2 block down.  Came in right when they opened at 530 and ordered gomoku ramen (五目ラーメン), which is the seafood style ramen with soy sauce soup.  

The way it works is that the chef would stir fry the seafood (scallop, shrimp, squid, green onion) with the soy sauce dominated sauce.  then, put the food into the soy sause based ramen.  I was almost starve to death and when the food was brought in front of me, I lost my conscious.  Furious I would recalled. lol. Just look at how much seafood is in there! granted it does reflect on the price to be a little bit more expensive. 


The soup is more toward less dense but full of flavor coming from the stir fry.  The scallop and the shrimp were fresh and with chewiness.  The noodle is a thin noodle and the egg flavor is still preserved.

Want to share the Scallop!! why cant they have a nigiri sushi option???

One more in fisheye! lol. 

Will come to try the other soup flavor.  This place is opened by Japanese people and they know what they are doing! Good!

-----------------------------------
Yu-Raku
104 S El Camino Real
San Mateo, CA 94401
http://www.yelp.com/biz/yu-raku-san-mateo


View Larger Map

Ramen Halu, San Jose, CA

Roger Federer.  no question.  "Maintaining his lawn" might not be the right words from ESPN but he was just inviting guest over.  Andy Murray played a good match.  Great match the first 2 sets where he brought his A game with almost 0 un-forced error.  The best I have seen him play.  Prop.

Continuing my search for tsukemen drops me to Halu Ramen in SJ yesterday.  It is their summer special California caught clam tsukemen with normal egg noodle.  They did have option to change to wheat noodle.

The soup is mainly chicken and vegetable based with the clam/seafood flavor with sea salt.  Once dipping the noodle, the flavor from the clam would be soaked in.  The clam is very fresh and chewy! loving it!  of course, egg never disappoints me here. One struggle I had is that the additional soup on the side is only chicken broth, which once combine with the dipping soup, clam flavor would lessen.  It would be nice to have clam soup actually! haha.

On the side note, I cant believe I am saying this but I bought Apple iTV! Airplay - you are evil!  Now, I can make a use of the big screen TV instead of watching on ipad.  Quality of the video depends on the app and the video itself.  I found that itune is not yet on iTV but only the matter of time.  One piece! here I come!!

----------------------------------

Ramen Halu

375 Saratoga Ave.

San Jose, CA95129

http://www.ramenhalu.com

View Larger Map

Shalala, Mountain View, CA

Friday = Basektball + ramen.  really.

after a stressful practice of team MAC (to stress: suicide for the losing team), it is obvious that intaking delicious food would heal all the pain from the practice.  Here are the order of the places we discussed => Ramen, Pho, Sushi (Really??). Pho, Tofu house, tofu house, pho =>Ramen. Yes. as I intended the conversation should be headed!  

5 of us ended up at Shalala yesterday and it was not as busy as anticipated.  We all order different soup base, but I ended up getting the summer special: tsukemen!  I did tried their tsukemen before but was not too impress with it.  "One more shot" was the thinking behind and actaully wanted something easy on the stomach. 

It was not on the menu.  Please asked the waitress!

The soup base is salt with fish broth.  Light and enough flavor to dip the noodle.  From J-Sport (free paper), the chef also puts in salt fermented rice melt.  I really like the Noodle where the egg flavor is stronger than most stores.  Suggest to put the green onion in the soup to create more chewiness.  I really want to try to put lemon next time in the soup to see if it bring out the flavor a bit more. Other than that, it was a very tasty ramen! yummm!

塩麹(しおこうじ)。勉強しました！

----------------------------

Shalala

698 W Dana St
Mountain View, CA 94041

http://www.ramenshalala.com

View Larger Map

Kahoo Ramen, Santa Clara, CA & Zpizza, SF, CA

Two days in a row Ramen! Have not done that in a while! 久しぶりです.  On the way back home, I have stop by Kahoo Ramen on El Camino in Santa Clara.  I was actually thinking of going to the other new place but decided not to risk to have a bad bowl of slurp (actually Yelp review was not appealing)....

I have ordered Shio Ramen with extra egg and green onion!  The broth is not the thick and dense broth boiled from pork bone stock, but it tastes more maybe chicken stock with less fat part.  The smoothness taking in is there which is nice. The egg and the chashu is the main part!  The fat and the meat in the chashu is matching.  Although it looks fluffy, it still preserved the chewiness of meat! Juicy!

It is great that I order an extra egg! The soft yoke just cannot be resisted.

After this bowl, I do appreciate that much more of the Tokyo Negi that I had yesterday!  The taste of the regular green onion is actually not as strong and the texture is not as crisp.  But hey. Willing to come back to try the other soup base the next time around!

Also! Want to promote a good pizza I had for lunch at Zpizza San Francisco! I got the Casablanca Pizza with mainly mushrooms and mozzarella Cheese!  It is unique in a sense that mozzarella cheese's texture is completely different from regular ones.  Combine with the butter garlic sauce, the smell and the aroma spreads out in my mouth!  Highly recommended and I would like to try the other pizza they have.  Of course, FiveStars card is accepted!!  Food and points => deadly combo.  

-----------------------------------------

Kahoo El Camino

3590 El Camino Real

Santa Clara, CA 95051

http://www.kahooelcamino.com

http://www.yelp.com/biz/kahoo-el-camino-santa-clara

View Larger Map

Zpizza
883 Mission St
(between 4th St & 5th St) 
San Francisco, CA 94103
http://www.zpizza.com

View Larger Map

Ramen Halu, San Jose, CA

Such a nice summer day in the South Bay! Always bright and sunny with temperature around 70 degrees!  I was doing some organizing work today with arranging all the receipt in order.  What I found out is that I do visit MickeyD every week and the trend is going upwards!  My belly balloon is going upward! need to change and have a healthier diet.  Not saying that eating ramen is healthy either but better than 99.99% oil MickeyD Fries.  Anyhow..
I came in to Haru Ramen today around 1:30 sitting in front of the bar.  Slow service is still the usual suspect here with 2 waiter/waitress.  I ordered Haru ramen with egg and Tokyo green onion as side order.  I have not completely figure out the difference between Tokyo green union and regular ones, maybe the Tokyo ones would bring the magic. haha.








Tokyo Negi (green onion) almost covered half of the bowl!  It was chewy and it did match well with the soup, which is very dense tonkotsu in flavor. The negi would gives it a refresher.  Other toppings are Menma (Green shoot), chashu, Egg.  The chashu here is thin sliced, soft.  The flavor of the chashu is completely surrounded by the dense soup.  Egg is half boiled egg with the yoke splashing out after a bite.  Faaantastic!











Noodle used are thick, very similar to Shalala's miso ramen noodle.  The egg taste is not strong but it is boiled enough where one bite would break it in half.  It would be better if the taste of the egg noodle stick out a little more.

There is this one taste that I could not describe in words actually about this noodle.  It might be in the taste of the noodle or the taste of the soup where I am hesitate to say that I can eat this everyday.  I am leaning toward the residue on the noodle?  random stuff. ha.








Cool! Today is actually my first time trying Line Photo!  It made the ramen picture that much clearer! very nice. Highly recommended.  They do have lot of frames to choose from but it would be nice to have a better interface on the choices!

---------------------------------------------

Ramen Halu

375 Saratoga Ave
San Jose, CA 95129
http://ramenhalu.com/
http://www.yelp.com/biz/ramen-halu-san-jose