Ton Ton Ramen, Waipahu

Ton Ton Ramen - Waipahu

So after a week of trying to get to Ton Ton Ramen I finally made it.  Ton Ton is F3's favorite oxtail soup joint and  i can understand why.  The meat here is just as she put it, "fall off the bone" tender.

We arrived shortly before 11:45 and the place was mildly empty, kind of understandable for a holiday Monday.  There were 2 other tables that were taken up, one by a diner and the other by a couple waiting for their take out order.  The waitress sat us promptly but then forgot to bring us menus.  Once she realized her mistake she came over and blushed while trying to apologize for her mistake.

The tables and appearance of the restaurant seem to have run down over time as my daughter's high chair was covered in grease and had 2 screws missing from one side.  The tables were a little sticky to the touch and the atmosphere smelled a little like old cooking oil.  

6 piece gyoza

The menu is mainly ramen and sides.  There are a few udon dishes and a few with rice in various sizes.  Of course, I opted for the Oxtail Ramen while my wife got the Ton Ton Ramen (big bowl) and we got a mini mochiko chicken for my daughter.  We also ordered a 6 piece gyoza to round out the meal.  The waitress brought over water for all of us which went to waste because it tasted like their ice machine hadn't been cleaned recently.  The gyoza came out almost immediately as if they had expected us to order it.  It was pretty good, crispy on the bottom and tender on top.  The centers were juicy and flavorful.  I commented that it tasted like O-Tastee brand gyoza like you can buy at your local Don Quijote or Marukai but the cabbage on the inside was cut a little larger and the gyoza itself were not perfectly shaped leading me to believe that these were homemade.

A bite or two into our gyoza and our waitress was back with our ramen.  The oxtail ramen comes in a decent sized bowl with about 6 or so pieces of oxtail sitting on the top.  The soup, at first taste, was on the blander side with a medicinal aftertaste.  It is accompanied by a container of chopped ginger which you can add to your liking so I put in a healthy, heaping spoonful and added a swirl of shoyu and the soup was good to go.

 Oxtail Ramen

The soup is surprisingly light for as cloudy as it looked and taste like a good oxtail soup should once the ginger and shoyu are added.  The noodles are flat and curly and cooked just right to have enough texture and body to hold the soup as you slurp it up.  The broth was a little oily for my taste as it left a film on my mouth after I had finished it.  The meat was extremely tender and not too fatty and the cartilage and gristle were tender and very easy to eat.  I had two personal problems with the oxtail itself.  One was the fact that the larger pieces had been cut down into smaller pieces and I had nothing to really gnaw on after eating the meat.  The second was there was way too little of it...  I could have eating a second serving of just the meat!

I noticed in one of F3's pictures that she had just the oxtail soup with rice on the side.  I may have to see if I can do that on my next trip.  As for an oxtail ramen, this tasted like an oxtail soup with ramen noodles in it.  If I compared it to Ramen Nakamura's Oxtail ramen, Ramen Nakamura would have to be closer to a ramen as the broth is more of a traditional ramen broth with oxtails as the feature meat.  Comparing it to the oxtail saimin at Alonzo's @ the Mililani Golf Course, I think that Alonzo's is fuller in flavor as they combine the oxtail broth and saimin broth together in their soup.  Either way, Ton Ton has made it to repeat status whenever I'm down in the Waipahu area looking for some oxtail.

  My wife's Ton Ton was an adventure in itself.  It was fully loaded with all kinds of different things including chicken katsu, char siu, corn, wakame, kamaboko and egg.  The broth for the Ton Ton was a cross between a shoyu ramen and a miso ramen.  It was a little on the salty side but carried well on the noodles.  My wife usually will leave the bowl empty on a good ramen but said that it would have been too salty to finish the broth left in the bowl when she was done.

Ton Ton Ramen with katsu on the side

As for my daughter's mochiko chicken, the chicken was very flavorful and crispy.  The taste was similar to the mochiko chicken at Tanioka's down the street but crispier and cut into smaller pieces.  The mac salad seemed to be an afterthought for the owners of the restaurant.  The noodles were well over cooked and mushy and seemed to be unflavored and seasoned with just a cheap mayo as it was sweeter than your normal Best Foods mayo mac salad.

Mini-mochiko chicken plate

All in all it was a pretty good lunch.  I thoroughly enjoyed the oxtail itself although I would have to admit that each dish we ordered had at least one flaw to it  If I had to give a rating to the over all meal, I would have to hold back and say 3 1/2 stars to the meal with an asterisk of 5 stars for just the oxtail.  As you can see there was only bones left in my bowl when I was done with it.

All Pau!

Catching up...

I got scolded today by F3 about not keeping up with my blogging... so here goes...

Spicy Pork

Yesterday, after sitting in Waikiki for a conference in the earlier part of the week, I finally got back into the lunch routine with my co-workers.  We decided on Choi's Garden for some healthy Korean food.  I guess you could say that CG has become one of our monthly lunch hang outs since the food is pretty good and the service is quick and friendly.  Parking is relatively easy since there is a valet who will take your car for you if their lot is full.

Spicy Pork and sides

One co-worker decided to eat the stone pot bi bim bap while another decided we would share a yuk ke jang and spicy bbq pork between the two of us.  I usually flip between the multigrain stone pot rice combos and the cold noodles but spicy pork sounded good so I jumped on board.  The spicy pork was excellent with just enough heat and flavor not to overpower the taste of the pork.  It was served with Korean miso, raw garlic, jalepenos and lettuce leaves to wrap the pork in.  Sadly the sizzling platter it came on wasn't hot enough to finish cooking the garlic all the way through so the garlic was semi-raw and pungent.

Still CG is one of my top 3 favorite places to eat Korean food and I'll be going back again soon.

F3 doing her thing again

Today on the other hand was a experiment in gluttony with my new favorite foodie, the incomperable Miss F3.  We headed over to Young's Fish Market in search of the elusive butterfish laulau.  This was a task in itself as Dillingham Blvd was shut down due to some sort of accident and gas leak and traffic around Youngs turned into a beast of a jam. 

F3 taking pictures of food

Once we got there we were saddened to find out that they were out of the butterfish laulau and we had to settle for pork instead.  The laulau there are fairly huge but I was pleasantly surprised to find that my luau leaves were extremely tender and the flavors from the pork had seeped in without making the leaves over salty.

I also ordered ahi poke with limu kohu and, of course, turkey tails.  The ahi poke was okay but for the price, should have been mixed to order.  It lacked salt so I put a good helping of chili pepper water to give it some extra taste.  The turkey tails were hot and fresh and not very oily which was good since that meant that I could eat more before my viens clogged over with fat. 

My Plate

The laualu plate also came with poi and lomi which was ok in flavor but the lomi was short on salmon for my liking and the poi was too fresh and on the watery side. 

For those of you who are reading my blog without knowing about me, I'll give you a little background about some of my food experience.  I worked for many years at a Hawaiian food restaurant upon moving back to Oahu 16+ years ago.  I was the fish cutter and poke maker for many years and have developed many different types of poke over the years.  I am very critical of Hawaiian food as I can make most everything myself. I have and continue to do the catering of pupus for various weddings and events, which makes me very critical of the flavors and quality of foods I eat at restaurants.

That being said, I was happy to get my fill of some good Hawaiian food with the exceptional company of Miss F3.  It's probably been over a decade since we've seen each other and I hope it won't be that long before we get together again.  BTW, as for Hawaiian food... stay tuned to this bloggosphere to see some of my cooking and possibly a recipe or two in about 3 weeks as I will be making some Hawaiian food for a viewing party during Merrie Monarch week...

Serg's Mexican Kitchen - Manoa

Inspired by my friend, Fashionably Forward Foodie, I decided to start documenting my eating adventures.  My first stop on this journey was one of her recommendations, Serg's Mexican Kitchen in Manoa.  I pass this hole in a part-of-a-closed-down-gas-station fairly frequently, either on my way to the Manoa Marketplace, Andy's Sandwiches or when I eat right across the street at Asia Manoa...  I've never ever had the inkling to stop and try it out until reading about it in her blog the other night. 

Luckily for us, it happened to be a pretty cool and sunny day with the tradewinds blowing just enough to keep the heat down.  All of the seating at Serg's is out doors where the gas pumps used to be.  F3 had recommended the beef flauta in her blog but I opted for the pork carnitas with beans and rice.  What was set before me was better than I expected although not a perfect plate of food.  The carnitas were flavorful but a little on the drier side for me.  The rice was a little mushy and the beans were lacking a little salt but on the whole, not bad for being hidden 5 minutes from my work. 

Carnitas with rice and black beans...

*** rant mode on ***  One of my biggest peeves about Mexican restaurants is when they only serve pinto beans and no black beans for refried beans.  The other peeve is that some restaurants over process the beans so there is no semblance of a bean anywhere to be found on your plate.  *** rant mode off ***  Happily Serg's served black beans as their side... sadly they were over processed and looked like a slop of black paste tucked in a corner of the plate. 

There was one redeeming quality about Serg's that I found to be very tasty.  Along the counter Serg's has a variety of freshly made salsas which I had to sample.  I don't believe in mild salsas so I hit the three hottest to smother my carnitas in.  The avocado salsa was my favorite, followed by the spicy tomatillo and the chipotle-hot.  The avocado and tomatillo reminded me of my friends from Northern Mexico, heavy on the lime and cilantro.  As salsas they were very tasty but mixed together, they were wonderful.  

Co-Workers Beef Chimichanga

While I was sitting there trying to blog my experience I got a phone call.   Apparently the Blogger App for Droid doesn't save your work when you get phonecalls thus the lack of pictures and details about the food.  Luckily some of the photos were on my phone so I was able to upload them to this blog.  I promise the next blog will be better... I hope...