One reason to love a ramen shop is when they give you a piece of paper so that you can customize your ramen order. For example, you can specify how you want your noodles cooked, hard or soft. Broth, light or normal, etc. This is one of the reasons that I love the Hakata Ikkousha chain. You can customize all the aspects of the bowl. I’ve mentioned this when I wrote a review of Ikkousha in Torrance here. When you scroll down you’ll see what I mean.
This chain is know for their tonkotsu style broth. It has this signature creaminess and it’s almost frothy when it comes out. It’s really rich and flavorful. It comes with thin noodles. This chain is very consistent, so you can rest assured that you’ll get quality ramen at their various locations. The karaage is the bomb. It’s large chunks of chicken and they provide this dipping salt. I THINK IT’S MAGIC. I believe it’s salt, white pepper, and cayenne.
On the web @ https://www.ikkousha.com/english/store
I work in Newport Beach and since I was on my own for dinner tonight, I stopped by here. As you pull up. Lights in red.
The front door. I can’t wait to walk through it. I arrived before they’d opened for evening service.
Their hours of operation so you can plan your visit.
Some friendly instructions for you newbies.
Evidence of my early arrival. I had to wait outside for about 10 minutes. I was their first customer for the day.
The order sheet. I went with the black tonkotsu this visit. They add a fried garlic paste that gives it that signature black look.
I only took partial photos of the menu for some reason. No clue as to why. You can visit my other post for their sister location to see the menu. They are identical.
Now I’ve been to 2/3 of their locations in Los Angeles. I’ll hit up the downtown location sometime.
The extra onions that I ordered really take up the entire shot here. I’m a fan of onions generally. But, going forward I’ll refrain from getting extra. Just too much at once for my liking.
Their karaage. It’s amazing and they serve their magic powder. But, they don’t provide scissors like their torrance location. These karaage are large and 3pc is plenty for a party of 1.
This is the salt. I took a picture after I had already eaten.
I ate so fast that I didn’t really take time to capture the noodles.
This was early on in my ramen content career, so I didn’t have many pictures or video. But I did have a few seconds of the outside, a beer, broth, and noodles to hopefully give you an idea of what this stuff looks like. I promise to keep improving my video skills.