Hey everyone, it’s Joan.

We had a ramen run on Tuesday with my brother, Mark, at a little place called Koraku in Sherman Oaks. The only reason why we went there was because our plan that day was to visit my old friend, Garrit, at his base all the way in Port Hueneme. Since we were driving about 115 miles out of our way, we thought it would be a great idea to find a ramen house in that direction. We don’t normally hang around those parts of California, so it was a little difficult trying to decided on a ramen place to check out. Luckily there is such a thing as google maps and yelp so it helped us make that decision. Hence, we ended up at Koraku.

The place was in fact, little, but it was cute and the decor was very interesting. Take a look!

I didn’t like the idea that we were the only ones there. But that didn’t stop up from trying this place out, so we sat down and made our order. It was a little strange when a group of 5 high school girls came in, sat down, then after a few minutes, they all got up and left without having made an order. I felt kinda sorry for the server who had to clear off their table again.

I ordered the Tonkotsu Shio Ramen since it was the closest thing I could find that resembled my favorite ramen. I thought it tasted great but it was too salty for me. Well duh, it is a shio ramen (salt seasoned broth).  I don’t think they use MSG though, because usually I’ll feel swollen after when I have it. The pork flavor was good though. The noodles were interesting because it tasted extra… wheaty? Is that even a word? Well now it is. It was too wheaty. The neat thing about this place is that it was the first place I found in California that had kamaboko (fishcake) with the ramen. I only saw that in Hawaii so far. I love fishcake! The flavored egg was nice and warm like the rest of the ramen. I liked the chashu because it didn’t have too much fat.

By now you all should know that I am a little bit of a health freak when it comes to ramen. Yeah, ramen isn’t exactly the healthiest thing you can have anyway, but if I can, I’ll have it with as little fat and as low salt as possible! And of course, because I’m picky, I really don’t like ginger and bamboo in my ramen, and I totally forgot to ask them to remove it! It’s probably because I read the menu and it didn’t say it had them. Lame. Luckily my brother likes bamboo so I gave them to him and I just picked the ginger off.

My brother, Mark, ordered the Miso Ramen. He’ll be guest blogging today. I’ll let him describe it to ya!

“So, I tried out the Miso Yasai Ramen. It’s pretty flavorful. Nice taste that is slightly stronger than a miso soup. It’s not too salty. It’s not too bland. Just a good amount of what it needs. This ramen comes with cabbage, pork, bean sprouts, mushrooms, seaweed, and some bamboo shoots. A very nice blend of vegetables in my opinion. The noodles were nice and tender. Some of the flavor of the miso broth soaked into the noodles to give them a very nice taste. If anything could be changed to this, I would like to see the restaurant add little pieces of tofu into the ramen. All in all, a good selection from the menu. I rank it 4 out of 5.”

~Mark

Hey, Tanya here. Yum! I did like this place. I really liked my ramen. I’m a spinach girl. I am glad I went with this order. It was a Shoyu based ramen and had a TON of spinach. I love sauteed spinach in garlic and sesame seeds. Its actually a really good Korean side dish and its served cold. The broth wasn’t too salty and the noodles had a great texture(I like them chewy) but they did taste salty. Which was strange, but if you had a good amount of spinach with each bite then it balanced the salty part. There were also tender, lean beef pieces buried in the spinach. Even though I did like my bowl of noodles, I don’t think I would drive out of my way for it. But if I was on my way to Ventura county then I wouldn’t mind popping in 🙂

Joan again. Based on how the ramen quality was at that place, it’s probably a place that we’d only stop by once. In our lives. Ever. Unless all the ramen places disappeared and we really really needed ramen to survive. Okay, okay. This place wasn’t that bad, but I certainly wouldn’t drive out of my way to get ramen there. It must have been about 60 miles away from home and I’m hardly in this area.