Hide-Chan Ramen

After a long delay, we finally tried Hide-Chan Ramen. I first heard about it from my colleague who raved that it was her favorite ramen place. 

First impression is that the table turnover is much quicker than other popular ramen shops- Totto Ramen and Ippudo. We came on Saturday night 8pm and it seemed that the waiting time for 2 people is about 15 minutes. It was a little tricky for us as there were 7 of us and so, we waited approximately 45 minutes. Not too bad.

We tried the spicy pork bun. It was $1 more than the regular pork bun with the addition of the spicy mayo. Bad choice. Even though it sounded better with the spicy mayo, it turned out to be overpowering the flavor of the pork. Therefore, I believe it deserves another attempt (without the mayo) as currently, I preferred Ippudo's pork bun over Hide-chan's.

Here, you have the option to choose the firmness of your noodle and the richness of your soup- Hakata (richer) vs NY style- which is pretty good as I don't believe the other ramen places provide these options.

Both Michelle and I tried the Hakata Kuro Ramen (aka Spicy Black Ramen)- served with original "ma-yu" roasted garlic oil- with firm noodle and Hakata style. This ramen was featured among NYC's 5 best inexpensive bowls of soup by CBS. However, the waiters mixed our orders and so instead, one was replaced by Hakata Spicy Ramen. The only distinction between the two is just the addition of roasted black garlic oil in Hakata Kuro Ramen, but it clearly helped to alleviate the overall flavor as it was a clear winner to us. Both ramens featured the pork belly which I found to be pretty good but not as soft and tender as Santoka's Melty Pork Cheek.

Hakata Spicy Ramen

Hakata Kuro Ramen

 

On another note, I also tried my friend's Shoyu Ramen. I don't believe I had many experience with clear-soup based ramen but to me, this was the best ramen of its kind that I tried so far. The soup was very fragrant despite the fact that the soup looked plain. However, it might be laden with MSG.

Overall, I had a good first impression of Hide-Chan ramen even though to me, Totto Ramen has a slight edge towards Hide-Chan. I didn't realize that both ramen places appeared to be owned by the same owner till recently. In order of preference, I would rank 

1. Totto
2. Ippudo and Hide-Chan
3. Santoka.