[紐約拉麵] 鳥人拉麵 Totto Ramen

Address:366 West 52nd Street, New York, NY 10019-6200
http://tottoramen.com/

Long time no see, NYC!!! I haven't been to the city for so long and I miss my friends and food here a lot. With my old old old friend, V from Taiwan, we  (well...actually it's she) decided to go to Totto Ramen for lunch. Most of my Taiwanese friends loves Japanese style Ramen and there are some pretty good once in NYC. So far I have been to Ippudo & Kambi (both are delicious so that I went back couple times), and it'll be my first try to Totto today.


As usual, you have to wait in line since the restaurant is very small. And we saw on their board outside that they are advertising their potato salad. Normally I'll just ignore it, but you can add the spicy cod eggs in it (mentaiko)!!! It's salty, it's a bit spicy and it's so delicious in many many things! So V and I decided to order it.

The pink/orange balls you see at the right bottom corner is mentaiko. I have to say that they are too generous and gave up too much mentaiko. That makes this salad a bit too salty. But anyway, this is just the appetizer. Our focus is more on the ramen.    

I ordered: Totto Extra Spicy Ramen

It is just a original Totto ramen with extra spicy rayo (spicy sesame oil on the side). I remembered that I looked at the waiter with a very confused face and he told me that the extra spicy rayo was so spicy that some people thinks they can have spicy food actually couldn't take it. So I tasted (like a little sip) the rayo and oh my god! That's absolutely mild for me! Well..but I am very different than most people though since I LOVE spicy food and am very well trained by my mom, who is even a better spicy food eater. Since it's not going to make my ramen spicy but adding extra fat (make it oily), I decided to ditch it and just go for the original totto ramen.

The original Ramen came with scallion, onion, char siu pork, and a nori. Of course I have to add additional bamboo shoot (one of ramen's best friends!) and kikuraki mushroom (very healthy and delicious! The texture is very different from any other types of mushrooms! It is a good friend with many noodle soups!). And  look how full the bowl is! It almost looked like there wasn't enough broth but it's way more than enough...just that you can't really see it after all these extra toppings! They are very generous with them.

As for the broth, it was so light but super flavorful! It was a chicken and premium soy sauced based broth, and they really did a good job. The ramen noodles are homemade (of course!) and very delicious. I like their char siu pork a lot better than Ippudo's.If you've been to both (you really should!) and you'll know what I am talking about!

I'd love to go back again!!! 

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