Fatal error
Japanese ramen has been on the fashionable food trend lately in London, from its rich soup stock cooked with animal bones, to its smooth noodles and bold flavours of the garnishes. I can see why it is popular among busy Londoners especially given that you could be in and out of a ramen joint in less than 30 minutes. Tonkotsu in Soho is one of the few places that pioneered the trend and I finally got the chance to visit it on a warm Friday evening.
We ordered some side dishes to go with our ramen, the handmade prawn gyoza dumpling was pleasant with its thin pastry layer and moist stuffing. Salt and Sansho pepper squid was tender and well fried but lacked the robust seasoning as how it was described in the menu. The massive issue was my Soho ramen, it had a much lighter soup stock to the usual Tonkotsu using a mixture of chicken and pork stock, which was decent. But some parts of the noodles were still undercooked and got stuck together at one end, and it was almost impossible to eat due to the tough and rubbery texture.
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| Soho ramen |
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| tonkotsu ramen |
I informed a waiter with the problem and he quickly replaced it with a fresh bowl of ramen, but he never explained what went wrong or asked for any feedback when we were paying the bill which was rather unprofessional. At the end of the day, if your signature dish and selling point is ramen, these kind of mistakes really shouldn't happen from the kitchen, the ramen was either rushed to go out or it wasn't cooked consistently inside the soup stock. Unfortunately Tonkotsu committed such a school boy error and I don't see any reason why I would give the place another visit due to the high percentage of competitors in the area.
Food 2
Service 3
Ambience 3
Value 2
£22 per head with a cocktail
63 Dean St, London W1D 4QG
http://www.tonkotsu.co.uk/
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