Kamamarui ramen

I’ve been waiting for the opening of Kamamarui’s second location ever since they started their renovations. I’ve been to the original Kamamarui location before (post here) and enjoyed my dining experience quite a bit so I was more than thrilled when I found out that they were opening up another one in my neighbourhood!

Interior

The interior of the Kamamarui Hastings location was pretty much a cookie cutter copy of their Kingsway location. Lots of woodsy boxy themes throughout.

The only difference is that they didn’t have their cute little doggy tail coat hangers on the wall at this location.

And of course, their menu was the same too, as with their signature house made sauces.

OMG that spicy sauce just I swear I could eat food topped with that stuff all day long. It’s seriously so addicting and I couldn’t get enough of it!

We decided to get a few of their ramen combos so that we could try a bit of everything for dinner since we couldn’t all agree on what to get.

The bomb

★★★

A rice ball with seasoned seaweed and teriyaki sauce

Lil’ bun loved these little guys. I mean there’s nothing more adorable than onigiri! The teriyaki sauce was evenly distributed throughout and well balanced, the only thing is that the rice balls weren’t rolled very tightly and came apart easily.

Vegetable ramen

★★★

A miso soup base ramen topped with green onions, bean sprout and corn

Not the most fancy or colourful veggie ramen out there because it was really only made up of bean sprout but it was alright. The ramen noodles were cooked well and still had a bite to it (this goes for all the ramen here) even after sitting in the broth for a good 15 minutes!

Twinkle

★★★

A deep fried pork with sweet, spicy and sour sauce

I think this was one of their newer menu items because I don’t remember these being available on my first visit here.

We were all expecting something that resembled Chinese sweet and sour pork but that was not what ended up being in front of us at all!

What showed up was ground pork “meat balls” breaded, deep fried and then topped with tempura bits, a tangy sauce and bell peppers. The pork on the inside remained moist and the breading on the outside was super crispy even though it was coated in sauce.

Chashu ramen

★★★★

A pork soup base seasoned with soy flavor green onions, bean sprouts and chashu -> sliced pork

Everyone at our table adored the 3 HUGE slices of chashu that this bowl of ramen had to offer. The pork was flavorful, soft, tender and just all around yummy in the tummy. The pieces weren’t too fatty either which was a total plus because that means you get more meat 🙂

Buta don

★★★

Pork belly on top of rice. Nothing too special here but the good amount of sauce on top helped everything stay flavourful!

Miso ramen

★★★★

A miso and pork soup base seasoned with miso flavor, green onion, bean sprout and pork slices

We weren’t really sure what the difference between the “miso ramen” and the “miso chashu ramen” was but from what I was told the only difference is that you get less pork slices in this version (as you can see the slices are much smaller and there’s only 2).

The miso broth for this ramen had more depth of flavor than the one in the veggie ramen probably because of the addition of pork in it. We preferred this broth over the one from the chashu ramen because we found this one to be a little too salty for us since it was shoyu based.

Kamamarui menu

The five of us didn’t end up finishing all our food and almost regretted adding extra noodles to our chashu ramen because that’s the amount we ended up taking to-go. I say almost regretted because who doesn’t love being able to have left over deliciousness? Plus since we were getting it to go, I got to take some of that amazing spicy sauce home with me too 😛

Summary