Ramen Yamadaya - San Diego

Date of Dining: 8/26/2012
Price: $8-11 per ramen, $4-5 per appetizer
Location: 4706 Clairemont Mesa Blvd, San Diego, CA, 92117
website

The Quick Bit

+ great tonkotsu flavored broth

+ fresh takoyaki

+ high quality ramen

Δ seating space could be larger

Δ non-tonkotsu dishes could be improved

One month ago, Ramen Yamadaya opened in San Diego. You would think that I would have been on top of this one, but instead I was distracted by something called Boiling Crab. Fast forward a month, and Yao at {insert-food} informed me that he thought Ramen Yamadaya was on par with the Costa Mesa location. As I was generally happy with the Costa Mesa visit, I knew I had to try Yamadaya.

Ramen Yamadaya has two qualities going for it:

1. the tonkotsu broth is boiled for 20 hours
2. they save the good bits at the bottom of the stock pot to make the kottieri sauce

For some other San Diego blogger coverage, check out Kirbie's post as well as Dennis's

Appetizers

edamame - salt

This was your typical edamame appetizer with salt added for the extra flavor punch. The edamame came out piping hot, so we had to wait a little bit for it to cool down. 

takoyaki - ginger, katsuobushi

The takoyaki also came out piping hot, which was a good thing. Unlike other San Diego locations, I felt that these were not the pre-made frozen variety. The katsuobushi added some nice umami flavors to counterbalance the piping hot pancake ball with the chewy center surprise. Overall, a very fun and well-executed dish.

Ramen

Yamadaya Ramen - tonkotsu kottieri, bamboo, wood ear mushrooms, nori, egg

As I reviewed in the previous post, the yamadaya ramen comes with the traditional chasu topping as well as braised pork belly. We elected for the kottieri sauce as the table took my advice to sample that flavor combination over others. The soup was very nice and creamy and full of flavor.

kakuni ramen - tonkotsu kottieri, bamboo, wood ear mushrooms, egg

The kakuni ramen is the most expensive ramen on the menu and comes with an extra large sized portion of the braised pork belly. Again the soup was extremely tasty and full of flavor.

While you can't see it in my photos (you can in Kirbie's), the noodles for the ramen are special thin noodles. The noodles at our table were generally cooked well and had a nice texture, but the consensus at the table was that we missed the more traditional larger noodles.

While I understand that the thinner noodles have a larger surface area to enjoy the flavor of the soup, one element of enjoying a proper bowl of ramen is enjoying the noodles themselves.

tsukemen - chasu, egg, bamboo, nori

I opted for the tsukemen and got an extra large bowl of noodles so the rest of the table could share.

tsukemen noodles - the thick kind

As you can see, the noodles of the tsukemen were the more "traditional" thicker ramen noodles. When these thicker noodles were placed in the tonkotsu broth, the consensus was that people were generally happier with the taste.

The noodles were prepared perfectly and were extremely chewy in texture. This really added to the enjoyment of the tsukemen because it allowed the flavors to linger on the palate for a longer period of time.

tsukemen broth - kakuni

The tsukemen dipping broth contained the same concentrated tonkotsu flavors, but were modified additionally with a strong element of nori and other kelp flavors. The broth contained small bits of braised pork belly as well.

Unfortunately, when I asked the waiter to take the bowl to add hot water to my tsukemen, he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. This is an absolute sin to enjoying the tsukemen as the advantage of tsukemen is that you get the noodles in soup from the ramen portion and additionally get the fully flavored broth to finish off the meal.

Conclusion

Ultimately Ramen Yamadaya in San Diego still has a few growing pain kinks to work out. However, the flavor of the tonkotsu broth alone easily makes the ramen the best I've had so far in San Diego. I'm really happy that Yamadaya is now in San Diego as it really shortens my drive for quality ramen.

Yamadaya San Diego carries forward the franchise bit award for the San Diego location on the strength of the tonkotsu broth alone.