Restaurant Review: Kahoo (ramen)

Kahoo - dinner on March 10, 2014, 3.5 stars on yelp, 1108 reviews

I met my friend Cindy, the one I'd given the Texas Fudge Cookies to, for dinner a couple of weeks ago at a new-to-us ramen place, Kahoo. Kahoo has several locations so I guess they're a mini "chain" in our area. We'd already tried Ramen Halu the last time we'd met for dinner; Cindy was in the mood for ramen again and suggested Kahoo. The one we went to has a bit of a weird location. It's in a strip mall just off the freeway, which is fine, but it's rather tucked away in that strip mall so if you don't know where to look, they might be hard to find. The inside was also smaller than I expected. It's L-shaped with the short part of the "L" being the entrance way and the long part being where most of the tables and the counter seating are.

Yelp reviews warned about long wait times when the place is crowded but fortunately Cindy and I met early enough, just after 6 pm on a Monday, to be able to get seated right away. Kahoo filled up before we left but we got there before things got too busy. The music is a bit loud or I'm just old but it was nothing too eardrum-splitting.

Chicken Karaage

We split an appetizer of Chicken Karaage which is another name for breaded, fried, boneless chicken (hello, yummy). You can dip the chicken in a sauce but I'm not a sauce person so I liked it as is just fine. I've had Chicken Karaage before at another ramen place but it was way too salty. This one was not. It was perfectly seasoned, not greasy and the chicken was just right, not too thin, not too thick.

As for the ramen, we both ordered the Shoyu Ramen; it was the standard ramen with a soy-based broth. There's a salt-based broth but I opted for the soy sauce. There wasn't much cha-su pork in the ramen but what there was of it was delicious. I also liked the broth. Unlike the other ramen places I've tried, the broth remained the same flavor, i.e. it didn't become more and more salty as you consumed it. Points for Kahoo on that one. My only minus is it's definitely a carb-based meal. There was only half of a soft-boiled egg (other places often include a whole one) and only a few bits of pork which I think they could've increased. But the ramen noodles were nicely chewy and, as mentioned, the broth was good. For under $10, I'd go back again for good ramen. (Note: they do offer a low-carb ramen bowl, sans the ramen noodles, which seems counter-intuitive to me but for anyone low-carbing, you still have options at Kahoo.)