Q Go Ramen
1443 West Broadway
Vancouver, BC
Reflecting on my last ramen post, i.e., Motomachi Shokudo, I have to admit that, despite new ramen shops have appeared, one thing is also good: Opinions have been divisive as to which ones are “good” and which ones are “bad”. In fact, some people believe Kintaro is still king of the hill, while Santouka is overrated, the lower profiled Benkei hits the spot and Sanpachi seems to be middle of the road. Unless you are the one who says “everything is good” (specially if you didn’t have to pay for it), these opinions are good because it allows so room for discussion. So, just to throw yet-another-ramen-shop, I went to Q Go Ramen….
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Tagged as:
Japanese,
Pork,
Ramen,
Vancouver
Motomachi Shokudo
740 Denman Street
Vancouver, BC
Here we go again… A two months ago, I did a revisit to Kintaro (original post here). When I first visited it two years ago, it was regarded as the best in town. But, looking back, there wasn’t much to compare against. After an onslaught of ramen shop after ramen shop, with Benkei, Santouka and Sanpachi, among others, it was a question of whether it could hold itself up. Alas, it didn’t. The question is now if Motomachi Shokudo, a sister restaurant to Kintaro, in a similar way, would hold itself up or not. As usual, there is only one way to find out… A revisit!
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Tagged as:
Downtown,
Japanese,
Ramen,
Vancouver
Kintaro Ramen
788 Denman Street
Vancouver, BC
To those who haven’t been reading this blog for long, back in October, I celebrated this blog’s second anniversary. Looking back, I have seldom posted about restaurant revisits for other reasons. What I have implied for the longest is that, what I wrote was valid at that point in time but, as time goes, things might have changed. The restaurants have changed, my likes have changed, time has changed. Or, as an acquaintance yoga practitioner would tell me: “your body is different every day”.
For the longest, every time there has been a new ramen shop in town, something that has partially exploded in the last 24 or so months (Sanpachi, Santouka or Benkei, just to name a few), I have always used Kintaro as a reference (my original blog post, back over 2 years ago here). So, that begs the question: should a revisit be worth it? Have Kintaro kept up with times? Or is it still surfing over that initial popularity from eons ago? So, with high expectations, around lunch time at work, I decided to take that (short) walk to see how and if things have changed…
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Tagged as:
Downtown,
Japanese,
Lunch,
Ramen,
Vancouver
Sanpachi
770 Bute Street
Vancouver, BC
Originally, I had two more additional San Francisco posts; however, when people asks your feedback about certain restaurants, at times, you can’t avoid try to switch the post dates and have it as soon as possible. Such is the case of Sanpachi, the newest ramen shop on the block. Of course, if you look closely, shokutsu of Foodosophy, had already written about it but, hey, the more opinions the better, right?
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Tagged as:
Downtown,
Lunch,
Ramen,
Vancouver
Katana-Ya
430 Geary Street
San Francisco, CA
On our first night in San Francisco, after the FoodBuzz welcome reception street food fare, we were driven back to a hotel near Union Square. While everybody was walking back their to the hotel, I noticed a restaurant that I thought “just for kicks, this might be interesting for us to try!” The following night, while waiting for the gala dinner and seemingly seemed to be taking forever, I was telling the “gang” (as in TS/JS, Mijune and Sherman) that if dinner didn’t star by 8:00 p.m. (officially the invite was for 7:00 p.m.), I might as well go back to the hotel as I was tired already, a bit grumpy (OK, grumpier than usual). Wait! What about the food? Hey, food is always in the radar and Katana-Ya, that said restaurant, was on the way back to the hotel! Given I wrote about the dinner, that means we were let in before 8:00 p.m. which means we had to see if there was space/time to go there. And, actually we did! Since our flight back to Vancouver was in the late afternoon, I agreed with Sherman to meet way past the lunch rush crowd for a last lunch before taking the BART (hence, to the airport) and back to Vancouver…
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Tagged as:
Japanese,
Ramen,
Rice,
San Francisco,
Seafood
Miki Japanese Ramen
5212 Kingsway
Burnaby, BC
ET of Doesn’t TaZte Like Chicken once asked me “How long does it take you to write a post?” Back then (almost a year ago), I told something about ~1 hour post processing pictures plus another 30 or so minutes writing the actual post. That, is of course, not counting the time it takes to decide what restaurant to go, etc. etc. That was back then… The question is, what about now? So, as a test, I asked myself, if I didn’t have a post in the queue (the original post for today was that of Pho Hong, which will be rescheduled for this coming Monday), how long would it take me write a post from scratch? Well, there are of course some things that takes time of its own, for example, where? To avoid spending some time figuring that out, I decided to go to the same restaurant Sherman visited yesterday plus the order the exact same dish(es). That restaurant was Miki Japanese Ramen.
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Tagged as:
Burnaby,
Japanese,
Ramen
Hokkaido Ramen Santouka
1690 Robson Street
Vancouver, BC
“There is always space for one more”
That phrase is of course a tongue-in-cheek. In some areas of Vancouver, you see a saturation of certain restaurants, yet, it seems one more restaurant always pop out. Fish and chips in Steveston, Indian in Surrey, Izakaya in Downtown Vancouver. In the corner of Robson and Denman, also known as the ramen epicentre in Vancouver, we already have the three main ramen shops: Kintaro, Motomachi Shokudo and Benkei Ramen (and its “relative”, Benkei Ramen in Thurlow). The question is, of course, is there space for Hokkaido Ramen Santouka, the newest addition in the ramen picture in Vancouver…
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Tagged as:
Downtown,
Japanese,
Ramen,
Vancouver
