Continuing the quest to find good ramen, this time I went to Hakata Ikkousha Ramen, or just Ikkousha. It’s located very close to Midori Ramen, just a few hundred meters closer to Osgoode station.
Ikkousha is a fairly large ramen chain franchise operating globally, with two stores in Canada. Funnily, both stores are right next to each other; one only sells pork broth, the other only does chicken broth. As the pork ramen store was much more packed, I decided to go with the chicken one. It was also a good chance to try some more chicken broth ramen to compare to Midori’s dishes.
Food
Ikkousha offers four noodle types: soft, normal, hard, and very hard. The scale roughly dictates chewiness and hardness. The restaurant recommends starting with normal and says that most people end up preferring hard. I went with hard noodles.
Additionally, a set of condiments is provided if you ask for them. These contain ginger, garlic, pickled mustard leaves, black pepper, soy sauce, and an odd one called ‘ramen sauce’. The last one basically tastes like brine by itself. It’s recommended to add these and adjust the ramen’s taste the way you want it.
Takoyaki ($9)
I got takoyaki again. It’s very basic but also very hard to go wrong with. The takoyaki at Ikkousha was ok. It was a bit mushy for me, but that’s about the only criticism I can say. I’ve had better ones, but the takoyaki wasn’t bad or anything. It’s all personal, some people may prefer a mushier texture. The price is on the higher end, so the appetizer is rather poor in value.
God Fire Lv. 2 with extra noodles ($16 + $2.5)
God Fire is a spicy ramen dish, a chilli pepper type spicy. You can choose from spice levels 1-4, and the dish was more red than the picture shows. In retrospect, I somewhat regret getting this one. Not that it’s bad or anything negative, but because the spiciness was overwhelming.
I would say my spice tolerance is moderate, not too great but not horrible either. Restaurants have a very wide range of what they define as ‘spicy’; some places have three pepper signs next to dishes yet are completely edible, some only say ‘midly spicy’ yet it can get pretty uncomfortable. So when I picked level 2 spiciness here, I didn’t know what to expect.
Turns out that level 2 is already more than enough for me. I usually always drink all the broth but didn’t bother here because of the spiciness. After leaving the restaurant, I felt my stomach being irritated by the broth when walking.
Second, the ramen broth itself is very mild. Unlike Midori’s creamy broth, it was very hard to taste Ikkousha’s broth, especially with the overwhelming spiciness. As a result, I felt like I was just eating pure spiciness without much flavour. The garlic condiment helped somewhat, but there’s a limit to what just garlic can do. If I went back (which I should at one point), I will definitely order something else to actually taste the broth. The mildness is a good thing, restaurants tend to pump their dishes with salt and spices to make them taste better. This comes at the cost of intaking too much salt, so having mild food from outside is a nice change.
Other than complaining about the spiciness, I liked the noodles and toppings. The hard noodles are slightly chewy and are pretty firm. The toppings are all fresh and taste good, the chicken slices especially were cooked well; quite soft and juicy.
God Fire itself isn’t a bad dish, people that have a great spice tolerance will probably enjoy it. But for me, it was strong enough to completely overpower the broth’s taste and so I couldn’t really give any kind of review. So until I try a milder dish, I can’t give a conclusive opinion of Ikkousha’s chicken broth.
Price ($27.5)
The price is fine and is roughly the same place as other ramen stores. I’m unable to say whether it was worth it, since the God Fire was just too excessive. I’ll likely post another review later after revisiting, and that one should firmly decide the value.
Final thoughts
I will go back to Ikkousha Ramen later for a re-evaluation to do it justice. The God Fire wasn’t a good pick to judge broth flavour, so I believe I didn’t get a real representation of what the chicken broth tastes like. There’s also the pork broth store to visit for another occasion.