Monday, 5 January 2015

Noodle reviews: ramen @ DonToo and boat noodles @ Thai Culinary, Melbourne

Miso ramen with extra egg $10.80

 The money shot

The gory ending
DonToo
This is our pick for the best tasting bowl of ramen in Melbourne. While others will disagree and while it's certainly not the most authentic ramen out there, it's the one we consistently go back to. So why is it the best? Firstly the price: at $9.30 their miso ramen is ridiculous value, especially considering that other ramen joints easily charge you $15+ to get the sorts of topings you get as standard in DonToo's version. It's also just super yummy and ridiculously comforting: the homemade noodles are always lovely and chewy (and you get to upgrade to 300g worth for no extra cost), the broth is delicious and flavoursome, something I have found lacking in other bowls of ramen, the pork is super flavoursome and not too fatty (although this is a personal preference, others prefer a fattier cut of pork like the traditional rolled pork belly), there are plenty of vegetables including my fave—the corn, the marinaded egg is absolutely delicious, well flavoured and gooey in the middle (so much so that I almost always order extra egg), and last but not least free condiments!!! At the counter you can pick up cute little jars of garlic, chilli, pepper and sesame oil. I add all of them in abundance to my broth while M prefers to go au naturale; but hey, it's nice having a choice, right?

Beef boat noodles (no beef balls at my request) $9

Thai Culinary
As previously alluded to, when the hankering for boat noodles hits, we generally go to Jinda Thai in Abbotsford to quell the craving. However, like the last time we wanted some Thai, Jinda was booked out. Instead, we headed round the corner to Thai Culinary, which is usually pretty good if you want a quick meal on the cheap. I've ordered the boat noodles a few times at TC now, after changing from my previous fave of pad see ew. The first time I got the boat noodles here, it was a huge serving, with really nice soft meat and bits of crushed whole garlic cloves for extra flavour. Nowadays, the serving is definitely less generous, the meat not as nice and no more garlic. That said though, the flavour of the broth is still really nice and even though it lacks the blood which is traditional, it's still very very flavoursome so I'd still recommend it if you have a hankering for a hot bowl of spicy and fragrant noodles in the CBD.

DonToo on Urbanspoon Thai Culinary on Urbanspoon

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