Ramen Danbo has been a ramen spot that we have been wanting to visit for the longest time. We walk by it almost every time we are downtown but the reason why we haven’t visited is because there is always a line out the door! But today was the day and after a 20 minute wait, we were rewarded with the most delicious bowl of ramen.
The menu here is simple. There are 4 different soup bases to choose from: tonkotsu, shio, miso and negi-goma. What I love about the menu is that there are vegan versions of each of the broths to choose from as well! They also let you customize each bowl of ramen by ramen thickness, noodle firmness, soup thickness, soup richness and amount of spicy karadare (umami red pepper paste). In addition to their ramen they have a variety of appetizers and add-ons to make your ramen bowl all the more delicious.
Mentaiko rice don
We had high hopes for this rice bowl hoping that it would be just as creamy and rich as its udon counterpart. Unfortunately, we felt that for the amount of rice that we got, there wasn’t enough mentaiko to go around. What ended up happening was we were left with a bowl of rice with hints of mentaiko. We wouldn’t order it again over the other rice options but for $5.75, it was okay.
Shio ramen
Grayson decided to get the shio ramen with 2 extra slices of chashu. Their chashu is an extra $1 a slice but you can order the “chashu version” of the ramen to get 6 slices if you prefer. He said the shio ramen broth was very light and not too salty. Grayson liked that you could choose how you wanted your broth flavoured and the karadare paste on top added just the right amount of heat to it. He said that the chashu slices were super juicy without being too fatty. He also loved the ramen noodles so much that he ordered an extra portion of noodles for just an additional $2.
Tonkotsu rekka ramen
I don’t usually choose tonkotsu ramen because the broth tends to be too heavy for my liking. Luckily, I was able to customize my soup so I decided to try it out! I got the broth light and it was perfection. The broth had depths of flavour and the noodles were the perfect amount of firmness.
Ramen Danbo, We will be back!