Santa Ramen

category: restaurants
by Yun,

Here it goes! It is one of my favorite ramens at the bay area. As we planned for the trip and knew that we would arrive at San Francisco’s airport (SFO) at about noon, we immediately considered Santa Ramen as our first stop for lunch. Santa Ramen is located at San Mateo, less than fifteen minutes driving from SFO. Sound like a good plan!

However, things did not work as the way they should. We missed our flight because of the long time we spent on checking in our luggage, plus a random detailed screening done by TSA that took almost thirty minutes. They conducted very thorough physical searches of carry-on luggage, using handheld explosive detection units. Ow boy, it was painful… Finally, we landed at SFO around 1:15PM. After we finished collecting our luggage, it was 1:40PM already. We were wondering if we still could have a lunch at Santa Ramen since they closed at 2PM. With a consideration of the bad traffic from SFO to San Mateo, we decided to go to Santa Ramen the day after. (Note: Special thanks to our friend AK who gave us accommodation while we stayed at San Francisco.)

At that time, Santa Ramen already moved to a new place that is more spacious than before. So, we did not need to worry about waiting for thirty to sixty minutes to get seated as what we usually experienced at the old location. The server will ask you what you want to order before they let you sit. Once you get seated, they promptly serve the food. I think this is a good way to improve restaurant efficiency, especially for a full restaurant like Santa Ramen.

Compared to any other types of ramen, such as miso or shoyu, tonkotsu ramen is my most favorite ramen. Tonkotsu ramen is a pork flavor based soup ramen. Both A and I ordered pork flavor soup ramen, which was very rich, fatty and full of flavors. The ramen has the right chewy texture. Before, I never got a chance to taste their legendary stewed pork due to its limited availability. But at that time, they still had the stewed pork available. Yay! Each of us (except A, duuh…) enthusiastically ordered the stewed pork. I thought that their stewed pork was a bit too fatty. However, I was glad that finally I could taste it.

When dining in any ramen restaurants, my ramen is always best coupled with tamago (egg) that has a very nicely textured egg yolk inside with a very soft white egg outside. But I could not have such kind of tamago at Santa Ramen because their tamago is way too overcooked.

Is this the best ramen? It really depends on your preference. However, Santa Ramen is certainly one of the best ramens at the bay area. So, when you have a plan to visit San Francisco in the near future, make sure that you include Santa Ramen as one of your destination places to eat.

Santa Ramen

1944 S El Camino Real
San Mateo, CA 94403

650.344.5918

Comments

1 Comment so far

Rina | 23 October 2008, 22:50
Yun, lo memang liburan di SF, atau satu malam doang, terus jalan ke tempat lain?
Btw, lo tinggal di negara bagian mana sih Yun? Duh, sorry karena gue lemot ya, dah chat sekian lama, masih bingung di negara bagian mana lo tingal Hihihi…
Foto liburan ke Indo gue tunggu ya… =) Yun, review resto di Indo dong sekalian promosi wisata, hehehe

Iya rin, gue mampir ke SF on the way pulang Indo kemarin. Gue tinggal di Ohio
resto di indo ntar kalo di solo gmn? hahaha…

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