Four years ago I thought ramen was cardboard one microwaved and poured MSG on until it becomes edible. Don’t get me wrong, I ate it all the time, (and still do when my girlfriend leaves for the weekend). Then, while living in Japan, Sarah and I discovered a ramen shack dubbed “Juso Ramen.” No one knew the restaurant’s real name—reading Japanese is really hard, guys—but Juso was the neighborhood and Juso Ramen served the best bowl of ramen in Juso. Maybe all of Osaka. Sarah loved Juso Ramen’s creamy pork broth. I loved their marbled pork belly. But what really set a bowl of Juso Ramen apart was how much garlic they used. Just an absurd amount. After eating there, my pee and nipples would smell like Garlic for the next 24 hours. My nipples! I hadn’t even known that was a thing. Since returning to the Bay, Sarah and I have roamed the Richmond searching for a ramen shop to fill the noodle-shaped hole in our stomachs, but none fit style and caliber of our Juso Ramen. Then we found Hawker Eats—an Asian-fusion izakaya and ramen shop brought to you by Judy Chen and Kevin Chen, formerly of the Richmond restaurant Kaiju. If not for the bowl of ramen decorating the awning of Hawker Eats (on the corner of 18th and Balboa), you might mistake it for a run-of-the-mill American diner. The small, snug space, which seats 18, is hung with kitsch-yet-charming decorations like a framed cartoon of two women which reads as follows: Woman #1: What’s your favorite kind of men? Woman #2: Ramen. Hawker Eats’ menu features all sorts of freaky fusion ramens I wanted to try; ramens with jalapenos, ramens with whole friggin lobsters—the kind of ridiculous shit I’m usually too curious to pass up. But our mission was to find a worthy successor to Juso Ramen,; those ramens would never fly at Juso Ramen. So Sarah ordered the K.O. Ramen ($14); with its pork broth and lack of weird random shit, it looked on paper to be the closest thing to Juso Ramen. It’s a good thing we ordered appetizers in the meantime: the food came slowly and judging by Yelp, our experience was not a fluke. To Hawker’s credit, they compensate with highly attentive service and a congenial atmosphere. Our sampling of Hawker’s appetizers included green gyoza, chicken yakitori, and eggplant skewers. All featured the same delicious deviance from Japanese tradition: pesto. Though it worked well for each individual dish, it felt repetitive and left our appetizer combo without the interest and variety one might hope for from a place specializing in fusion and tapas. Then the main event arrived: the K.O. Ramen. It came in a giant bowl, which Kevin Chen refers to as “monster bowls.” More of a basin, really. Large slabs of pork belly—more marble than meat—floated in a cloudy, mustard-yellow broth dotted with globules of fatty oils. It sure looked like Juso Ramen; it even had the soft-boiled egg and greens. Sarah and I tried it at the same time… Cue angelic choir. Cue hallelujah. Cue Sarah cheering “Yatta!” in Japanese (meaning “we did it”), drawing awkward attention to the Richmond’s two whitest residents. The pork broth was every bit as rich as Juso Ramen and the pork belly every bit as tender. Of slight difference: Hawker’s pork belly is a bit sweeter than Juso Ramen’s on account of what I believe is a teriyaki marinade or glaze. Also, the K.O. Ramen also comes with pork foreshank, which is cooked with a crispy skin. So, on the whole, Hawker’s K.O. Ramen a lot more meat than Juso Ramen. No complaints here.
The one metric in which some people felt K.O. Ramen fell short was garlic. Both Sarah and I agreed that the K.O. Ramen, which uses a black garlic oil, was noticeably less garlicky than Juso Ramen. We did, however, disagree on how we felt about that fact. For Sarah, it meant the K.O. Ramen was the best thing short of Juso Ramen, but still not quite there. I, on the other hand, felt it was on par with Juso Ramen and was especially pleased to wake up the next morning without garlic nipples. Go Here If: -You want good Asian fusion and amazing ramen -You’re looking to hide away in low-key hole in the wall Don’t Go Here If: -You want a drink with dinner. No beer, wine, or liquor. -You need unconscionable amounts of garlic in your ramen.
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