Monday, 29 July 2013

Bone Daddies Ramen Bar: Soho, London

Bone Daddies Ramen Bar

Date of Visit: 14th June 2013

Ambience
This small restaurant was filled with high tables with wooden stools and you would often have to share your table with strangers, which is typical of ramen bars.  We arrived early as I was told it would get very busy after half 6 and it was true – it was pretty empty when we arrived at 6pm but as we were eating, a queue started to form outside the door.  The most eye-catching thing about the interior was the bottles of beer on show on the shelves and the menu on blackboards dotted around the walls.  



I was also surprised to see not even one oriental server in the restaurant – of course this did not matter if the food was good.  We found something rather strange on the tables alongside the condiments… a jar filled with hair bands! I presume it is for guests with long hair who doesn’t want their hair to feed on the soup stock?? I have long hair but I did not feel encouraged to use a hairband provided by the restaurant.

Food
Similarly to Tonkotsu, the menu is limited but again, it shows that the restaurant specialises in what they are good at, namely ramen in soup.  I had the original tonkotsu ramen with pork belly, which was ok – the noodle wasn’t as springy as I would have liked but it wasn’t soggy so it was fine. The belly pork was more fatty than Tonkotsu (reviewed in May) so I discarded a lot of the fat along with bamboo shoots which I am not keen on. 



Service
The service was quick and the servers were responsive – no issues at all.

Summary

I was a little disappointed given that this place was recommended as the better Ramen restaurants that have recently popped up in Soho.  However, the food was ok and wasn’t a waste of a trip but it wasn’t as satisfying and filling as I had hoped.  The verdict is, don’t always trust other people’s opinions as you may be surprised.  I will need to check out Shoryu for myself to do a comparison. 

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