Why is the weather way better in the bay area than the rest of the world? I wondered. It has been nothing but amazing after I came back from Tokyo. Say bye-bye to moist, say bye-bye to heat and of course special for this year, say bye-bye to 28 degree Starbucks. It is more like an oven than Coffee.
Talking my friend, Nick who has been living around this area for 4-5 years now, he mentioned that there are many ramen-ya along the Saratoga Ave area. I was like, hey hey! lets begin our exploration, shall we?
We went to
Ramen HALU (ラーメン 春) on Saratoga. The store is located on the other side of Mitsuwa supermarket and right across the road from Harker high school in a small mall. Around 3 minute driving from the exit of Highway 280. This place is receiving a very decent 3.5 out of 5 on around 700 reviews. Since we both are a bit hungry, we ordered a plate of 5 koroke, with the 2 bowls of raman.
The korokes are hiding! lol. (under the cut lettuce). The taste of pork and potato can be clearly recognized, which go along perfectly with the teriyaki sauce in the middle. I thought it was perfect for a very hungry stomach!!
I ordered the original Haru ramen with the original noodles. The soup is pork bone soy sauce based. The taste is more on the dense side, the soup taste more authentic instead of a packaged of instant noodle from a famous ramen-store. The denseness of the soup rated from 1 to 5 is around 3 or so. Just right.
From their store website, the noodle is made everyday in San Jose and shipped to the store daily. The chewiness of this noodle is closer to a Japanese preferred (弾力）. Might be too hard for some people to chew. The egg taste inject to the noodle can be tasted. It might be weird at first because the noodle has not completely soak in with the soup yet.
Granted that I only tasted 2 out of all the ramen places in bay area, ramen haru fits the bill of good to top grade ramen in the bay area. They also have seasonal ramen dishes. A definite recommendation.
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Ramen Halu
375 Saratoga Ave
Ste M
San Jose, CA 95129
www.ramenhalu.com
http://www.yelp.com/biz/ramen-halu-san-jose
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