I came here with the Kearny Mesa Lunch Bunch (KMLB) a while ago and realized I hadn’t written about it, so here goes.
The ramen menu consists of about 6 different styles of ramen. Each comes with a few toppings with additional toppings ranging from 50 cents to $2 extra, with the usual bamboo, chashu, beansprouts, green onions to choose from.
The menu is rather confusing in that they offer small bowls of ramen but does not give the pricing for it. In reality, it is $1.50 less than whatever regular bowl of ramen you order — simple as that.
I ordered chicken karaage to start and shared with the others. It was actually quite good.
I tasted the takoyaki (octopus balls) which they called fried octopus fritters on the menu….. were meh. I’ve definitely had much better and these were kinda mass-produced tasting. They also have gyozas (dumplings) which I didn’t try, but those who did said it was really good.
My small bowl of Nagoya style ramen doesn’t come with the soft boiled egg — the large bowl does. It doesn’t make any sense really because the egg costs $1.50 so essentially, it is cheaper to just get the regular bowl of ramen and not eat your extra ramen for the same price if you wanted a smaller bowl.
I got additional chashu, beansprouts, egg (since mine didn’t come with any) and bamboo. The ramen had a small spoonful of ground pork and some chives. The small bowl also comes with a minuscule amount of broth so the ramen was on the dry side. The regular sized ramen had a decent amount of broth.
Flavor-wise the chashu was really good, not too fatty and very tasty. The ramen was just so-so and the broth was on the weak side. I asked for the creamed garlic to add to my broth for additional flavor and it helped some.
In the end, when you add this topping and that topping, the price of your ramen can get quite expensive. My bowl of ramen ended up costing about $11 when Santouka ramen’s most expensive bowl of ramen costs the same with more pork and more toppings already included. Santouka’s broth is also far superior to the one here.
For a quick ramen fix this place suffices but it is definitely not THE best ramen ever.
Yakitori Yakyudori & Ramen
4898 Convoy Street
San Diego, CA 92111
Tel: 858-268-2888
that karaage looks amazing.
ingredients in the ramen look a little odd. still seems like a place i still want to visit 🙂