Asa Ramen

I was dragged here after some drinks one night. I wasn’t even that hungry. But my buddy said that they had great Takoyaki – which is Japanese fried Octopus balls. I like Takoyaki. . .but I wasn’t that hungry for it. But then he says its a ramen, then I was like – well ok, I’m in. It’s the simple things in life that make the world go ’round.

Our order of Takoyaki came first. We soon gobbled couple of those up. They were as expected. Creamy on the inside with the slight crusty deep fried shell. The light fish flakes on top with the sauce on top. I think the sauce is the standard tonkatsu sauce. It was what you expect. Which is good. Unexpected things didn’t happen. Those are the types of thins you remember vividly. You would remember if the octopus was too chewy – but that didn’t happen. You’d tell any soul that would listen if the fried batter was undercooked – but that didn’t happen. You would twitter about about the sauce being too overpowering – but that didn’t happen. The takoyaki was as expected. It was fine.

Then we had our ramen. I’ve never had ramen with butter. It’s always had a little more “fatty-ness”, meaning pork fat or lard, as I have ordered at other ramen houses. But Asa ramen offers it with butter. I thought that was interesting. I had to get it. The ramen noodles were ok, not exceptional. But it was the egg that fascinated me. I don’t know how they do it, but they have a hardboiled egg with the yolk a bit on the gooey side. The egg white is completely solid with the yolk runny enough where it mixes with the soup base and noodles into creamy goodness. I love eggs. I would love to learn how to do that.

Anyways. . . Asa ramen is a nice little place to go for ramen and takoyaki.

I went to Asa Ramen in the hopes of finding another splendid version, but I was sadly disapointed.

We started with a lovely tofu salad which was a beautiful block of firm creamy tofu covered in slivered green onion, bonito flakes and a lovely soy based dressing. This was one of my favorite dishes of the night. What followed was a well prepared appetizer of fried chicken wings that was crispy on the outside with tender juicy dark chicken meat on the inside. It was not greasy and I thought was an excellent combination of savory and crunchy. It came with a few baby greens and a little dollop of mayonaise, this was another winner in my book.

After that we were a little disapointed by a yam and green onion in ponzu dish that was very slimy and not terribly flavorful sort of like a room temperature mochi without any flavor. No one found this particularly appealing due to its consistency and its lack of taste.

And finally the soup that had been touted in so many write ups was extremely salty. I added a good couple tablespoons of crushed garlic and some hot sesame oil I had requested and that helped a little but it still remained too salty for my taste. I was also hoping to take the left over soup home and throw in a potato to get out some of the salt but the waitress said no take out was allowed so I felt like I left most of my soup because it was too salty and was not allowed to take it home and repair it. I should have sent it back.

If you are looking for the real thing and a delicious soup I recomend you try Santuko.

Great broth and ramen. The place feels like you took a trip to japan. The title is in japanese and the waitress doesn’t speak english and the menu is only in japanese, but if you over look that the ramen tasted great.