Restaurant Review: Kotetsu Ramen

Kotetsu Ramen - lunch on December 5, 2013

Is it cold where you live?  We generally have mild weather but we've been experiencing a cold snap lately. And there's something about chilly weather that puts hot soup or, in this case, hot ramen, at the top of my comfort food list.

When my coworker and I went to Thaibodia for lunch last month, we noticed a line of people waiting outside of Kotetsu which is located in the same strip mall.  Naturally, when you see a bunch of people waiting to get into a restaurant, you figure there's something there worth eating. We agreed we needed to check it out so the next time we both had an available lunch hour, we headed to Kotetsu. Since we didn't have the luxury of time to wait to be seated, we deliberately went early and were fortunate to get a table right away as the restaurant wasn't full yet.

Sea Salt based Kotetsu Ramen

We each got the standard Kotetsu ramen since this was our first visit and we "had" to get the restaurant's namesake order. They offer ramen in two types of broth: sea salt based and soy sauce based. I went with the soy sauce base and my coworker ordered the sea salt base. Although it's hard to tell from the pictures, each bowl of ramen comes with a whole, soft-boiled egg along with the noodles, a few slices of meat (typically chicken or turkey), and some greenery that, being me, I usually set aside.  For the egg, the white is fully cooked and the yolk is still soft and a little runny but continues cooking in the hot broth.

Soy Sauce based Kotetsu Ramen

What made this a good bowl of ramen were the noodles.  They were the perfect texture with a nice chewiness. When you think "ramen", generally those cheap Top Ramen packs come to mind but that would be an insult to Kotetsu.  Their ramen was satisfying chewy, not too hard but not mushy soft either. My soy-sauce based broth was also good.  But have you ever noticed that the first few sips of broth are the best? By the time I forked up the last bit of noodles and the broth was getting low in the bowl, it had become a little too salty for me. But for less than $10, this was a decent place for lunch.  I do advise getting there before noon though.  By the time we left, the tables were all full and there were at least a dozen people milling around outside waiting to be seated.