Ramen Santa @ San Mateo
It's generally accepted that Ramen Santa in San Mateo and Ramen Halu in San Jose are "the" places for tonkotsu ramen in the SF Bay Area. Ramen Halu is fairly decent, but since it is too much of a hassle for me to get to now (I have yet to know a ramen enthusiast who wants to fight the lunch hour line on weekdays), and I was pleasantly surprised that Ramen Santa isn't incredibly hard to get to with transit, I decided to give it a try on the weekend.
I arrived about 15 minutes after they opened, and there were already ~15 people waiting outside! Is decent food in the Bay Area so scarce, or the hype so incredible, that any place with a reputation will require lining up? Golden Gate Bakery, Swan, Burma Super Star, Koi Palace, etc. are all like this. I understand that good ramen shops in Japan tend to require queuing but their ramen-eating culture is also different, ie. you don't wait more than 10 minutes for your ramen and you don't take more than 15 minutes to eat. Yes, this brings me to the point that the service was very slow. It took more than 20 minutes before my order arrived.
The only thing on the menu was ramen. There were three kinds of soup to choose from, soy sauce, tonkotsu (I assume this is shio-flavored), and miso. Pretty standard. All the different items were combinations of different toppings. Some I recalled were mentaiko (salted spicy cod roe), kimchi, corn, stewed pork, seaweed, and bean sprouts. For lunch time they also had a combo of ramen + chicken karaage rice bowl. I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't add extra toppings à la Kintaro in Vancouver, except for boiled egg. Also I couldn't choose the level of greasiness/saltiness of the soup.
A short survey of the seasonings on the counter first: there were soy sauce, hot pepper flakes, and black pepper. I was kind of puzzled by the soy sauce, and disappointed that the hot pepper flakes appeared to be plain Korean hot pepper flakes and not shichimi.
Onto the ramen (tonkotsu ramen, $7.50 + $1.00 for egg):
Since Ramen Santa is fairly accessible from where I live, and is actually edible as opposed to a few places in the City (Suzu, Sapporo...), I deem it worthy of return visits, mostly for the soup (which is what tonkotsu ramen is 70% about anyway!). I would be extra happy if they fixed the egg, boil the noodles less, skip the benishoga, give me extra green onions, and have shichimi at the table.
Next to try: Katana-ya in the City.
A little extra
While I'm on the subject of food, I finally visited Tartine Bakery, oh the famed temple of sugar and butter, only 3 blocks from my house. I was totally underwhelmed. I had a Frangipane tart and a croissant to go. The tart filling was super sweet (although this might be due to personal taste since my tastes are very Cantonese, ie. everything is too sweet to me), didn't hit me over the head with almonds, and I was unimpressed by the hard pastry shell that fell apart when I try to cut it with a fork. Some might call this "tender"... The croissant was too big, burnt on the outside, and seemed undercooked on the inside. I gave it credit for tasting of butter though. My favorite croissant in the city so far was at either Boulange de Cole Valley or Petit Patisserie in Potrero Hill.
I arrived about 15 minutes after they opened, and there were already ~15 people waiting outside! Is decent food in the Bay Area so scarce, or the hype so incredible, that any place with a reputation will require lining up? Golden Gate Bakery, Swan, Burma Super Star, Koi Palace, etc. are all like this. I understand that good ramen shops in Japan tend to require queuing but their ramen-eating culture is also different, ie. you don't wait more than 10 minutes for your ramen and you don't take more than 15 minutes to eat. Yes, this brings me to the point that the service was very slow. It took more than 20 minutes before my order arrived.
The only thing on the menu was ramen. There were three kinds of soup to choose from, soy sauce, tonkotsu (I assume this is shio-flavored), and miso. Pretty standard. All the different items were combinations of different toppings. Some I recalled were mentaiko (salted spicy cod roe), kimchi, corn, stewed pork, seaweed, and bean sprouts. For lunch time they also had a combo of ramen + chicken karaage rice bowl. I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't add extra toppings à la Kintaro in Vancouver, except for boiled egg. Also I couldn't choose the level of greasiness/saltiness of the soup.
A short survey of the seasonings on the counter first: there were soy sauce, hot pepper flakes, and black pepper. I was kind of puzzled by the soy sauce, and disappointed that the hot pepper flakes appeared to be plain Korean hot pepper flakes and not shichimi.
Onto the ramen (tonkotsu ramen, $7.50 + $1.00 for egg):
- The noodles were straight and of medium thickness. I thought they were a bit soft.
- The soup was indeed milky, full flavored tonkotsu soup, topped with a visible layer of fat. It wasn't excessively salty (but salty enough to call itself ramen soup), and didn't stink of pork. The pork stink probably wouldn't fly here... I felt that Santa's soup was superior to Ramen Halu's.
- The cha-shu (pork) was tender, with fat running through the middle. However it didn't taste much of anything.
- Other than cha-shu, the toppings included green onions, wakame seaweed, and benishoga (red, pickled ginger) (!?). Ugh... I couldn't stomach benishoga except in gyuu-don, and I must make sure I let them know to skip it next time.
- I also ordered an boiled egg, thinking that it would be the soft-boiled heaven that Ramen Halu and any Japanese ramen shop worth a damn offered, but it was disgusting. It was just plain boiled (not marinated) and overcooked to the degree that there's a purple ring around the yolk. Had I been seated when most people had their orders, I would have known to not order it, since for whatever reason everybody ordered this hard boiled monstrosity.
Since Ramen Santa is fairly accessible from where I live, and is actually edible as opposed to a few places in the City (Suzu, Sapporo...), I deem it worthy of return visits, mostly for the soup (which is what tonkotsu ramen is 70% about anyway!). I would be extra happy if they fixed the egg, boil the noodles less, skip the benishoga, give me extra green onions, and have shichimi at the table.
Next to try: Katana-ya in the City.
A little extra
While I'm on the subject of food, I finally visited Tartine Bakery, oh the famed temple of sugar and butter, only 3 blocks from my house. I was totally underwhelmed. I had a Frangipane tart and a croissant to go. The tart filling was super sweet (although this might be due to personal taste since my tastes are very Cantonese, ie. everything is too sweet to me), didn't hit me over the head with almonds, and I was unimpressed by the hard pastry shell that fell apart when I try to cut it with a fork. Some might call this "tender"... The croissant was too big, burnt on the outside, and seemed undercooked on the inside. I gave it credit for tasting of butter though. My favorite croissant in the city so far was at either Boulange de Cole Valley or Petit Patisserie in Potrero Hill.