Taro's Ramen Cafe

A few months ago we were wandering through the city on the way to a picnic at the Botanic Gardens when I got us a bit lost further away then intended and we ended up outside Taro's Ramen.

My mind was instantly bought back. I knew of this place from Urbanspoon, other blogs and incredulous word of mouth from when I first started uni, years ago back in 2008. Apparently this was one of the good cheapo places in Brisbane for ramen, right up there with, at the time, Ajisen and the original Hakataya Ramen. Being a time poor, genuinely poor and lazy uni student I had neither the time nor the inclination to find the restaurant but I vowed to myself, one day if I had the money and knew where it was.

Now its 2012, and I finally found the place far, far away from where I had originally thought it to be on the corner of Adelaide and Wharf Street. Now Ajisen is closed, and reportedly the owner has opened up Raku in West End, Hakataya has opened up several new stores, at the time of report the newest being in Garden City and Taro still stands.

TAPAS? 

Oooh another special

+_+ interesting

It always appealed to me because I get the huge impression from his blog and website, that the owner of Taro's Ramen Cafe loves his job. Not in a little way, he lives and breathes his job, this is what he wanted to do as a small child in an uplifting award winning Miyazaki movie. From the descriptions of the paper menu, to the little displays on each table, to the different specifications on the ramen and massive types of toppings available, everything screams of painstaking detail and the desire of a man to tell you about a little bit about the thing he loves. Ramen.

Yep. I love easy to find places?

Taro's Ramen Cafe is a bit annoying to find though, its in the forecourt of an office building right on a corner. The front of it looks like your typical dodgy sandwich/fish and chip store with a name like, Mikes Burger Bar or something.

Hmmmm

So much booze ahaha. More out the back too!

Then you notice the proliferation of ramen menus, Japanese sakes and fancy drinks. They do however, have a weekday menu of fusion cuisine sandwiches. Also their menu is online. I advise you to look at the download section and actually have a look at the downloadable menu, since it offers a better idea of what is included. We ordered our ramens, grabbed a few drinks and headed out back.

Once you get past that part, the back really opens up into a nice little sheltered corner. The tables are all clean wooden tables with rather comfortable wicker chairs.

Such a nice breeze that day

I picked the red tonkotsu ramen, a creamy pork based soup with a nitamago - soy boiled egg, nori - seaweed, charsiu pork slices and a side of pickles that were forgotten. This soup base was interesting to me, as I'm used to most Asian soups being crystal clean with the exception of cloudy miso, so this creamy, cloudy thing sort of threw me. I remember one time, my aunt made me take care of our pork bone broth, 10L+, and when she got home, she insisted we eat it all that day because I had let the heat grow too high and it resembled this same soup, cloudy and creamy.

I really enjoyed it actually, I'm normally pretty picky with soups outside of my home. I find the cheap places I frequent use don't go to the effort of using a good stock and their soup lacks the depth of a good bone stock. This one tasted like a lot of time was put into it. I can't really describe it other than that, no oily finish, perfectly creamy with no watery, thin flavour. Only issue with it, was the gritty marrow bits at the bottom of the bowl when I was done.

The noodles were served al dente, had a fresh flavour and a firm bite form being served that way. I'm still trying to puzzle out what that bright red, thread like garnish was. The nori was absolutely delicious, I could happily sit there and eat bowl full of the stuff, dipped in a bit of that broth, it reminded me of a really, really good version of those snack seaweed you find at Asian stores. The soy boiled egg was soft poached and deliciously gooey. The pork, I wasn't a huge fan of, I normally associate charsiu with a really distinctive maltose red basted hue and the aroma of five spice powder, and I got none of it here. The red hue here was from the home made mild chilli and I couldn't taste a hint of spice at all. It was just red.

Mine was better

My Boyfriend got the shoyu ramen, vegetable, dried seafood and chicken based broth with wriggly fat noodles, charsiu, nori, egg and bamboo sprouts. I had a taste of his soup, but I immensely preferred my soup, but wanted his noodles. He had a different nori, that wasn't quite as strongly savoury as mine, but was still quite tasty.

Taro's Ramen Cafe:
Atmosphere: 3 in the serving area, looks terrible and no idea that its a Japanese place really. 7 outside, the outside was lovely and cool. Specials written everywhere on the walls and those signs on every table are a lovely touch.
Service: 7, help yourself to water, forgot my pickles which I didn't care for either. Friendly Japanese efficiency, as soon as someone was gone, zoom! Away went the plates and the table was given a quick clean.
Food: 8, quite good ramen. I would go back here and order the noodles for the shoyu ramen in the tonkotsu ramen for sure. My Boyfriend doesn't remember it at all though.