Hakata Gensuke

I was in Japan not long and just kept craving ramen when I was back in Melbourne. A few friends kept telling me that I had to try Hakata Gensuke saying it's very close to the ramen that I would find in Japan, but every time I walked passed there was a huge line at the door so I kept putting it off for awhile. Anyway, so I finally made my way there one Saturday night and waited in line. I went with the usual suspects, K, Bobo, Az, R, Mario and this time we had Zad and Lem join us. After 35 minutes in line, we finally got inside and squished onto a tiny tiny table.

Due to wait outside we had already decided on what we wanted so the wait for food was reasonably short.

To share I ordered some gyozas and chicken karage. The karaage came out first, 3 pieces of fried chicken with their 'secret' seasoning. The chicken meat was nice and juicy, it would make a perfect snack with beer.

The gyoza came as a plate of 10. It had a crispy base and well flavoured filling.

I got the black Tonkotsu out of curiosity. I had a really good black tonkotsu when I was in Shibuya and was hoping to get something similar. Hakata offered a good soup base and the broth was thick but it was still not the same thickness as you would get in Japan. The black sesame was great to heighten the aroma in the broth.. Being the pug that I was, I also got extra noodles with it and added an egg and bamboo shoots. You don't really need it but I find it nice to have.

Mario got the signature ramen which was the pork bone broth with char siu, black fungus and I added an egg and seaweed into this one. This was a rich full bodied soup. It is definitely one of the thicker ramen soup bases in Melbourne.

R, Az, Bobo, Lem, Zad and K all got either one of those with different things added in. 

Overall 15/20 I like it how you can choose the hardness of your noodles but the wait really put me off. The ramen here is nice but not something I want to wait 35 minutes for. I think I would go back to try their God Fire ramen on a day with less of a wait. Also, the ramen gets quite pricey as you add more things into it. For a similar prices at other places it would include a lot of the additional things like seaweed, bamboo, egg and black fungus. However the price is hardly anything in the bigger picture, it's the wait which is a pain.