Stephen "mavjop" J.'s Profile

I've been told that the beer selection is awesome (I'm not a beer drinker) and that the pastrami and in particular the reuben are wonderful, but when my wife and I went to The Refuge for dinner we had foie gras and charcuterie.

The foie gras was priced as high as any top-class restaurant but while ok was not fantastic, and was smaller than any other restaurant portion. Definitely a supremely bad deal.

The charcuterie was uninspired, IMHO. The pastrami rilette was the one really interesting thing on there (it was really rather good). Everything else was disappointing compared to charcuterie at other places I've had such things (often much cheaper elsewhere), and the portions were stingy, annoying given the premium charcuterie prices.

I do plan to go back (to try the reuben), but I wouldn't order charcuterie again, and no way in heck would I touch the foie gras.

I may revisit my rating after I've tried the reuben.

I love Santa Ramen.

I love places that do something and do it really well, rather than trying to do everything. At Santa Ramen, they know how to make good ramen (their Tonkotsu is particularly excellent), and they stick to almost only that.

You can add tamago (boiled egg) as a topping, and you can add a side of chicken karaage (which is truly fantastic, and small enough that you can eat it and eat your ramen) over rice at lunch time. They call this (ramen + karaage) a "lunch set".

They serve the best ramen in the Bay Area, in my opinion. To get better, you have to go to Shin-Sen-Gumi (http://www.shinsengumi...) in the LA area.

I went here in order to fill up a card (had to visit 8 different ramen restaurants, and for that would get 1 free ramen at any of them), and was more than unimpressed. The food was just plain bad. The place was full of flies. I was unable to finish my meal. Left not feeling good. I strongly recommend against going to Ramen Club.

I am absolutely stunned by Elaine T.'s scathing review. She obviously had some unfortunate aspects to her experience, but one bit of the review stuck out for me. She ranted that the egg was "undercooked" ("Health code violation?", she queries). Has Elaine ever ordered an egg "over-easy" or "sunny-side up"? Eggs where the yolk is not cooked to the point of solidity are not, I'm pretty sure, a health code violation. The soft-boiled egg is one of the things I really like about Himawari. Most ramen restaurants do their tamago hard-boiled. Now I'm hungry, just talking about this. I'll have to go to Himawari tonight and get tamago in my ramen. :-)

My favourite type of ramen at Himawari is the miso ramen. It is rich and tasty. Yum. The chasyu (sliced roast pork) is average/good, the buta kakuni (stewed side of pork) is excellent and succulent if occasionally a little bit overly fatty (usually not a problem), the noodles are pleasant.

I'm not as keen on their tonkotsu broth (broth made by stewing pork bones). It's not by any means bad. Don't get me wrong. It is less exciting, for me, than their miso broth, however. If I want tonkotsu, I'll go to Santa Ramen, also in San Mateo, or (even better, though the 360+ miles trip from San Jose makes it a little less easy to go to) Shin-Sen-Gumi in LA. Himawari's tonkotsu ramen often comes with thinner noodles than their other broths. This it not the only place I've come across this practice.

In addition to standard ramens, they also have interesting things like a ramen with a snow crab omelet on top. Really quite unusual, and rather good!

Himawari's Buta Kakuni _appetizer_ (which is stewed side of pork that has then been deep fried and then served with a broth [pretty basic dashi], chinese mustard and negi [green onions]!) is fantastic. They also have rather good agedashi tofu. I've heard that their chicken karaage is good, but I have yet to try it (FYI, Santa Ramen in San Mateo and Sakae Sushi in Burlingame have _outstanding_ Chicken Karaage).

In summary, this place is really rather a good ramen restaurant!