Tonkotsu Bar And Ramen, 63 Dean Street, London W1D 4QG
I don’t think we could have had any more appropriate ailments the night we visited Tonkotsu. I had just broken a tooth so was on soft food only and Ade had the beginning of a stinking cold.
Tonkotsu is named after the creamy ramen dish typical in Japan. The broth is created by emulsifying fat and collagen into the stock by cooking pork bones and fat for up to 18 hours over a high heat. Anything that takes that long to cook is worth trying out. I wonder if eating that collagen gives any anti-ageing benefits?
The restaurant is the little sister of our favourite local (well local to work) Tsuru where we have yet to find a better katsu curry, despite our half-baked attempt at a #katsuchallenge last year. We knew whatever Tonkotsu did it would be good. The post we wrote about Tsuru was one of our first ever, a bit embarassing to read it now.
The restaurant on Dean Street is set on two floors, cosy and café like, a total mix of the usual ‘trendy’ industrial style with a hint of Japanese flair. Filament bulbs hang from the ceiling mingled with birdcages, school chairs for seats, table legs made from what looked like scaffolding pipes. A small open kitchen is found at the front where the broth bubbles away in front of you.
The menu short and printed on a sheet of A4, not sure if this is to add to the cafe feel, I quite liked it, it added to the authenticity. There’s a huge selection of beers from local breweries, when I saw there was one called Beavertown Neck Oil £3.90 I knew that I had to have it, a beer made for me. Ade had a medicinal Raw Fayah, carbonated natural ginger drink £2.70, fresher and tastier than the usual ginger beer.
We had heard the gyoza were brilliant so we started off with some Prawn & Pork gyoza £5. These aren’t your uniform Wagamama ones (although we do love those too), these are a bit haphazard and fall apart as you eat them. Possibly a bit too much filling to skin ratio, but that suited me as I love that squidgy texture. They tasted so good, I could’ve had another serving.
Ade was on his sixth tissue by the time the ramen turned up, lobbing them in the bin every five minutes, which was handily placed nearby at the clearing station. I am just glad none of them hit a passer-by.
I had assured Ade that his Tonkotsu, £11, was just what he needed to make him feel better. The soothing ramen did the job, a thick creamy and gentle broth, the perfect kind for colds. The only downside was that the pork still had the fat on it, and not the nice crispy fat that we love, slimy fat, it was hard to eat around it (but it was meant to be like this). Plenty of beansprouts and veg, the perfect soft-boiled egg with the most amazing orange yolk was possibly Ade’s favourite part of the dish.
My Tokyo Spicy £9 was a delicious steaming bowl of spicy heaven, maybe it would have helped to clear Ade’s sinuses. The pork was fat-free, shredded and lots of it, it was truly perfect, I couldn’t fault it. My curly noodles had the right amount of bite to it, apparently you’re meant to slurp them, each mouthful should contain both noodles and broth, this totally goes against my hatred of noisy eating. Luckily for me these awful sounds couldn’t be heard against the restaurant chatter and music.
We finished off with some Ice Cream Little Moons £4, three little balls of sesame and yuzu (a Japanese citrus fruit) ice cream, we were gutted the salted caramel had sold out. The sesame rolled in black and white sesame sprinkles and filled with a grey ice cream not dissimilar to the colour of the walls in our living room. My favourite was the tangy yet creamy yuzu, loved the combined textures of the hard ice cream and chewy coating. A week later, my tooth is fixed by amazing dentist and Ade’s cold has diminished and passed on to me instead. I think I know what I need for that…
Now if only they sold ramen at Tsuru too… Although that would make the decision between a katsu curry and ramen very difficult indeed.
Tonkotsu Bar And Ramen,
63 Dean Street, London W1D 4QG
Opening hours: Mon-Fri 12-3pm 5-10.30pm
Sat-Sun 12N-10.30pm (Sun -10pm)
Nearest tubes: Tottenham Court Road, Charing Cross, Leicester Square
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ahem… i will have to disagree. Anyone who ever had real tonkotsu ramen will remain very disappointed here.
An embrarassingly small bowl of watery, tonkotsu ramen is 11 pounds plus 10% service charge =12.10. An outrageous rip off is the nicest way of describing it.
Paradoxically, the menu goes at length describing how tonkotsu soup is white and rich and creamy, as it simmered full of pork bones for up to 18 hours. Then, when the food arrives, it totally contradicts the description they so proudly put on the menu!!! Soup was a transparent broth which had hardly seen any pork bones, let alone boiled for 18 hours. The noodles were below average, most likely run of the mill factory made that you can buy in an asian wholesale supermarket for a few pennies.
For comparison, in Tokyo – certainly not the cheapest of metropolitan cities – the best tonkotsu ramen shops serve a wonderfully made, flavourful, rich, large bowl of ramen with freshly made noodles for around 5 pounds.
Enough said.
Thanks for your comment. We’re not lucky enough to have been to Tokyo so we based our review on what we’re used to in the UK (wagamama and the like). That said, here is another review that seems to agree with our opinion… http://www.metro.co.uk/lifestyle/restaurants/906133-amen-for-the-ramen-eateries-tonkotsu-and-ittenbari
Nice blog. I just got back from Tonkotsu and have to agree with Enrico’s comment especially in terms of value for money. Appreciate every serious ramen chef has his own style however some of the best tonkotsu or shoyu ramen I’ve had outside of Japan is in New York City where its amazingly authentic and what a good ramen should be.
From flavour, ingredients to texture.
Let me know if you’re ever in NYC, I can recommend 3 places that I frequent where it attracts good loyal customers everytime, big hearty servings and authentic flavours and won’t cost you as much as the one on Dean Street even after conversion!
Thank you for your comments, and for reading! Hopefully one day we’ll make it to Tokyo and we can have the chance to compare!
Who stole images from who?
http://londonfoodfreak.com/tonkotsu/
No stealing going on. We both used just one generic picture that was the same?
It’s not a generic picture, it was taken by the guy who runs lff.
You didn’t even bother to rename it. If you look on lff the EXIF meta-data for that photo matches the others in the review. Presumably the others weren’t generic enough to copy?
🙁
Thank you for your thorough and ongoing concern. We met Senthil (author of London Food Freak) last week and have just contacted him to say sorry for a genuine error. We take all our own pictures or they are supplied by the PR. Any others we usually credit. We WILL credit his picture on this post. Thank you again for your diligence.
It’s not exactly thorough, taking 5 seconds to check the EXIF data. There’s no need to thank me, I was doing it for Senthil who works very hard and takes a lot of care and attention to both his reviews and his photos. Thank you for chasing this up though, although it would have been better if you’d worked out where you got the photo from before you replied in the first instance. This would have saved 5 seconds of my valuable time, however in a spirit of goodwill I will not be invoicing you for that.
He is a top bloke and replied to our email instantly… So all good! So who shall I say is watching his back?
He already knows.
🙂
We Love Food are nice peope and I don’t believe they intended to use my image underhandedly. I let Tonkotsu’s PR use my image for a magazie article (for which I was not credited) then the PR abused the image banding it about the internet. We Love Food are not at fault for that.
We Love Food are nice peope and I don’t believe they intended to use my image underhandedly. I let Tonkotsu’s PR use my image for a magazie article (for which I was not credited) then the PR abused the image banding it about the internet. We Love Food are not at fault for that.
Thanks LFF… Hope this has cleared this up? We were getting a lot of ‘thumbs down’.
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