Late Night Ramen

flowers! <3

I'm going to take a break in the middle of my Germany posts to keep things more interesting and prevent excess backups :)

Returning from Berlin was like the happiest moment ever. Not that the trip was THAT bad..... but I was just so freaking happy to finally be back in my beloved SF bay area. Things started out great as Carlos picked me up at the airport with flowers :) and then took me back to my place to help unpack. After being up for like 24 hours and having nothing but kind of crappy but overly filling airplane pastas, I was really ready to have a nice, warm and light dinner. Only problem was that by the time we were ready to head out, it was pushing 10 on a Sunday night :(

Luckily for us, SF has plenty of places open late, and we were able to quickly pick Tanpopo, a decently rated ramen shop in the Japantown area. It was located just outside the mall on one of the mini walking streets. I was surprised by how crowded it was on a Sunday night, but it's a fairly spacious shop so there was no issue.

I was very impressed that we were immediately given water! And not only was it prompt, but the attendant refilled it without being asked multiple times!! One problem I have with many traditional Japanese restaurants is that it's hard to get beverages. This was some major points for Tanpopo.

The menu was definitely ramen focused but also had other Japanese dishes. I liked that the 12ish varieties were all listed with pictures. Picture menus make me happy. There was a pretty good selection of diff types with various meats and spicing. Free egg included!

spicy miso w/ extra pork

As a savvy consumer, I was ready with two options: garlic and spicy miso. Carlos also had two options, one being the spicy, so we determined that he should get that and I'd get garlic so I could try his. Then I totally Sharon failed when the server arrived!! I was informed that they had run out of garlic for the night, and instead of being creative I quickly switched my order to spicy miso meaning we both got the same thing. :P lame. His had extra pork in it, but otherwise, no even ingredient variations.

The ramen was pretty tasty! The spicy broth was very good and I liked the items in the soup. They even had one of those weird naruto swirly fish cakes in them which makes it seem super authentic. The noodles themselves were a bit chewy, and I think they might have been overcooked. It was good, but not outstanding. I feel like I would need to go back and try shoyu or something more basic before I made a final ranking.

size comparison with my glasses. HUGE!

Overall, it was a fun experience and it was perfect for its purpose. Also, the bowls were freaking huge which is inherently exciting :D