Menchanko-tei

www.menchankotei.com

131 East 45th Street

New York, NY 10017-3131

(212) 986-6805

We were in midtown the other night and still having the "ramen" craze I decided to go check out Menchanko-Tei. I heard they made very good hand pulled ramen noodles so I decided to give it a shot. Once we got there there was a 10 min wait, once we were seated we took a look at the menus and they had a big variety different Japanese food to choose from.

We started with their winter special $1.99 hot sake, a spicy salmon roe rice ball, agedashi tofu, and shrimp gyoza. The rice ball and tofu were excellent, however the gyoza lacked flavor and were stuffed only with 2 pieces cut up shrimp.

I chose the "Hakata Ramen", which was their ultra thin ramen noodles in a rich pork broth topped with simmered pork slices, black mushrooms, red ginger, and scallions. The broth was very tasty not overly porky, the noodles to  us tasted more like lo-mein then ramen, not sure if that is good or bad. The topping were just ok, the pork was a bit to lean for me, I prefer a little fat. We also tried a bowl of their "Shoyu Ramen"l, their traditional tokyo style thin ramen noodles in a soy sauce broth with the same topping as above. Again the broth seemed just ok and nothing to special, not overly salty. One thing is, I did not leave a MSG headache after dinner.

All in all Menchanko-tei is a good ramen shop, with a wide variety menu, and good prices.