It's alright I guess. At least within IB, you don't exactly have many options. I got a dragon roll,…read moreand it was normal? The shrimp is kinda meh, but otherwise there's nothing specific to complain about (well okay, there's lots of things I could complain about, but nothing too major) The portion of pickled ginger is a bit bigger.
Like with other joints, I'm curious as to what they have other than sushi. This place does have quite a lot of other options as well, including bentos, ramen, etc. I seem to recall having the bentos here years ago and thought it was not bad, so I decided to try their ramen.
Americans do seem very confused about types of ramen as tonkotsu ramen is almost always listed separately. Most likely, we discovered that this phrase sells as Americans want that meaty broth. Miso, shoyu, and shio describe the source of seasoning, the "tare," while tonkotsu is a form of "dashi," the broth umami. So probably your most common ramen is a tonkotsu miso; they're not mutually exclusive. As a result, it's more common for Japanese restaurants to list your options for "tare," without listing the broth because it's assumed that the base is tonkotsu no matter what you pick. Your actual contrast to tonkotsu would be options like chicken broth or niboshi.
Anyways, I got a spicy tonkotsu ramen, and....I'm not sure if this can really be called tonkotsu even. Ironically, the broth has almost no meat flavor, but the seasoning is pretty good. It's definitely not under-salted, although I don't think the flavor has much depth and the consistency is a tad thin. Plus, the pork in it was actually big, fat, and juicy. I can't believe I'm saying this, but maybe a little bit too fatty even. But I still loved it.
On the other hand, no menma, no kombu, and not enough green things. It does have a decent amount of bean sprouts. I guess there's no kamaboko either, but in my experience, the presence of surimi is inconsistent, and it's more ubiquitous in American-Japanese ramen anyways. Both the seasoning and noodles are kinda Chinese instead of Japanese. I already pointed out that the broth doesn't taste like tonkotsu, but the noodles are also way too thin. I mean, you can technically have thin ramen noodles, but even the texture doesn't seem right to me. There's also just a lot of broth and not much noodle imho. Some of that isn't surprising as I don't think there's anyone Japanese here; I can hear them speaking Cantonese in the back.
Finally, they provided three shrimp with my bowl of ramen for some reason. I think this would be more common with udon or soba; it's rather unusual for ramen. Also, those shrimp would always be bigger and crispy. I'm pretty sure these are the same as the ones in the sushi rolls. The sushi rolls hide their taste and texture. But laid out like this, you can see that these are pretty subpar, small and soft, a very sad imitation of shrimp tempura.
Three stars seems fair.
