This ramen shop in the Financial district looks cute. Black walls with Japanese writings, a clock with numbers spelled out in hiragana, and a t-shirt that (I assume) sells for 3000 yen (~30 USD). The owners seem to try keeping it as hole-in-the-wall as possible (to make it appear authentic?). Of course, despite what the name might suggest, it’s not actually underground, nor do you need any special thing to get in.
All basic ramens are $8 with $1 toppings. The basic ramen contains your choice of broth, pork (chashu), scallion and mushroom.
My miso ramen with extra kakuni (braised pork belly). The mushroom is raw (not only is that just wrong – think about cold mushroom in a luke warm broth! bleh!, enoki would have made a MUCH better ramen companion than portobello T_T). There’s ONE puny slice of chashu. The broth is fine but it’s missing something… (more pork, probably!!!) At least the noodle is chewy.
If you’re curious, this is what disappointment tastes like.
(Actually we later realized that we should have asked for an egg, that’s what missing. But still, we could really use another slice of pork…)
Address: Ramen Underground
355 Kearny Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
It’s packed when we went for dinner and online reviews suggest that there’s always a line at lunch, but San Francisco, when will you stop hyping up every. single. thing!
If it’s ramen or sushi, SF will keep buying it up, and there will be a fan base for it.
That’s like reputation inflation, it would only make SF ramen/sushi lose values. 🙁