Jess and I were in downtown for a Canucks game and we go there early to go eat somewhere nearby, and we happened upon TaiShoKen Ramen when walking around the area. It seems we're on a ramen streak recently so without further adieu!
We beat the rush here as we only had to wait about 15 minutes or so to get a table. We were asked if we minded sharing a table with other people and we didn't, so they paired us with the next two on the list. The restaurant isn't that big, just like almost every other ramen restaurant so there would usually be a wait here during busy times.
I just went with my usual ramen pick of Tonkotsu (miso) $10.25 plus Butter $1.00.
The options you can choose for your ramen are whether you want miso or karamiso, which was the spicy option, and also pork shoulder or belly. I picked just miso because I don't like spicy, and pork belly. You don't get to pick your noodle type or soup's richness either.
The miso soup that I picked actually turned out kind of spicy, which was very strange. It wasn't very rich, so it wasn't overwhelming like Gmen soup, but it wasn't that tasty. The noodles they use are the harder kind which I don't like, because they don't absorb the soup's flavour very well, and they also don't taste as great either in my opinion. On the other hand, it may have been a good thing these noodles didn't absorb flavour as this soup wasn't that great anyways. The egg was ok, nothing special. The pork belly I picked was mediocre. The piece wasn't as big as the ones served by other ramen joints, so I was hoping it would make up for it in flavour, but that wasn't the case. I did not find the flavour to be anything special at all. There were copious amounts of bean sprouts in here, so much to the point that I gave most of it to Jess's bowl as she had none in her ramen. They give you the butter separate like at Jinya. The butter I added did not do much to help the overall flavour of this ramen, and I was utterly disappointed at this dish all together. The servers and chefs are all Japanese, so this was very surprising!
Jess had the Tonkotsu $9.95 at the bottom of the pic below.
Service here got off to a bad start, as after we were seated, they completely forgot to give us menus. When we finally got the attention of one of the servers to ask for menus, she said sorry as she thought we already had menus. After we had finished our meals, the couple we were sharing a table with asked for the bill first, but for some reason, the server printed out all 4 of our bills and gave them all to them! They saw that and gave us our bills afterwards (they didn't treat us =p)
Overall this restaurant was quite disappointing as I was thinking it would be another good ramen place in downtown. For a Japanese staffed ramen joint, this was surprisingly bad. It didn't make sense to me why this place was so busy, but I guess to each their own when it comes to ramen preference, but this place did not do it for me, so I would not be recommending anyone to this place as there are far better options for ramen in downtown.
Food:
2.5/5
Service:
2.5/5
Price:
$$
Overall:
2.5/5
Thanks for reading everyone! I think this is the lowest I've ever rated a ramen place so far, so don't munch here!
- Phil
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