After visiting the SWEA Christmas Fair at St. Mary’s, we wanted some more substantial, well prepared food and since we were parked in the parking garage in J-town, I wanted to get some ramen. I ended up picking Marufuku based on a quick review on The Infatuation (and there were several recommendations that all looked great). It was a bit of a culture change going from the Swedish fair to J-town, but also very cool to be able to do so.
There, not surprisingly, was a wait list at Marufuku as expected so I put my name on their Yelp waitlist and was number 30 on the wait list with about a 40 minute wait expected. This ended up being ok since we weren’t super hungry yet and it’s always entertaining to wander around the mall. Time flew pretty quickly exploring the mall and soon enough it was time for our seating.
Restaurant was packed of course and quite loud (yeah, I sound like an old person) and lively. We had already checked out the menu in advance so we ordered some (cold) matcha tea to drink, the takoyaki starter, and Andrea ordered the Spicy TanTan Men ramen and aI ordered the Hakata Tonkotsu DX ramen.
The takoyaki came out very quickly. This consisted of octopus dumpling balls with some aioli and bonito flakes. It was interesting to see the heat from the dumplings causing the bonito to move by curling and uncurling as though it were almost alive. A fried dumpling with aioli and bonito is going to be have some flavor regardless, but there were only very small bits of octopus so it was disappointing in that regard.
But that was good enough to hold us until the ramens came out, which was shortly thereafter. My ramen was Hakata, or essentially a tonkotsu ramen with a deliciously rich broth and very tender, melt in your mouth chashu pork. All the additional bits added their own bit of flavor including the spicy ginger, the soft boiled egg, the corn, the thinly sliced kikurage mushrooms. Yum! My ramen came with a thinner noodle, but it was so much about the broth for me. I really couldn’t stop slurping it up so I finished it all, although I left a fair amount of noodle since I never finish my noodles in my ramen.
I then had a taste of Andrea’s ramen. Her’s was so very different being chicken based broth and protein with some heat from chili. This was also incredibly delicious with a rich flavor and so different from mine. Andrea wasn’t so hungry so she couldn’t finish hers (although she kept eating it regardless), but that only meant we had some leftovers that we could enjoy sometime at home.
Despite having to wait to get a table, it was well worth it and both of the ramens were incredible and I’d be very happy to eat here again!
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