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!