Santouka (San Diego, Ca) 4.25.2014

After dreading for more than three hours of long commute with a couple of transfers from one station to another, I finally arrive home in my hometown San Diego. I decided to come home for the weekend since I need to renew my expired passport and I also need to go to a COPA consulate meeting which is only being held twice every two months.  I've never been more excited to be back home especially adding the fact that I just finished a pretty busy week full of research, meetings, laboratories, quizzes and midterms. However, I felt bad at the same time since I couldn't come and join my teammates to one of the most anticipated tournament for me that was held at UC Davis. After getting picked up from the train station, my brother called and wanted to eat out for dinner. Since the weather was pretty gloomy and cold, my family wanted to eat at Tofu House at first, however we totally forgot that it was a Friday night and at this time of the week it's usually the busiest time to go there. When we got there we couldn't even find a parking spot so we just left.

Since Tofu House was a no go for us we ended up going to Santouka Hokkaido Ramen. This branch is located inside Mitsuwa's grocery store and it's one of their nine ramen houses in US alone. The place also had a full house when we arrived as I expected but at least they don't have a long line like the one in Tofu House so we were pretty lucky to find a table quickly. 

For one of my side dishes I got a bowl of Ikura served with smoked salmon over rice. This bowl is amazingly savory and good! Probably one of my favorite side dishes here. The smoked salmon along with the Ikura roe was just plainly perfect together with rice *by the way Ikura is basically a salmon roe which you can usually find in your sushi. I was actually eating this while eating my bowl of ramen and my sister wanted to try it out so I gave her my bowl to try it and then later on I found out that she finished it all! I only had a few bite so I didn't got the chance to enjoy it. Well probably she did lol. I should've just ordered two if I only knew.

Santouka Shio Ramen

I ordered their Shio Ramen. Their Shio bowl contains medium size noodles, pickled plum, Menma, Kikurage, and pork back Cha-shu. The broth was actually a Tonkotsu base made from boiling pork bones, vegetables, fish, kelp, as well as other ingredients.

I don't how and how long did it take to make their base soup here but the quality of the taste shows a good amount of effort was put into it. It was mouthwatering good and savory! Their medium size noodles was also cooked just the way I like it not too soft but just perfect to be scrumptious and chewable. However, I didn't like the red plum that they added since I'm not a big fun of the sour crunchy taste of it so I didn't really enjoy that part in my bowl. The Cha-shu pork though was heavenly with a good portion of meat and fat in each cut that I had. Overall, the whole ramen experience was just great with a well balance of flavor and textures in both the ramen bowl and the side dishes that I had... Now the question is would I come back here again? And the answer is a definite Yes. By the way...since I just had ramen in LA just few days ago it's pretty easy to compare and I must say that this one is better than what I had two days ago. Definitely a must try when you're in town.