Thanks to university, I have been sapped of my free time. I typically eat at home anyways, so the extra burden of school has forced me to withdraw from eating outside even more. However, the ramen quest is still ongoing, albeit very slowly.
The place I visited this time was Touhenboku Ramen, located close to Queen St. West and McCaul St. This area is packed with ramen stores, both Midori and Ikkousha are here, as well as a few more that I haven’t been to. Touhenboku have two other locations, one in Toronto and one up north beyond Richmond Hill.
As a side note, Touhenboku offers their menu as a 22 MB PDF. If somehow this review ever gets read by someone managing the restaurant, please make a space-efficient menu. There’s no reason for a restaurant menu to be this big.
Food
Chicken Miso Ramen with extra noodles ($17.45 + $2)
I haven’t tried chicken broth ramen ever since the first Ikkousha review, so I went with it. I also like miso in ramen broth, so this ramen seemed like a particularly good choice for the day.
You can order tons of extra toppings such as extra meat, eggs, and a lot more. I went with the default toppings, which include a boiled egg, slices of chicken, green onions, mushrooms, and seaweed.
The ramen tasted mild, as expected of chicken broth. It’s not very salty or strong, and this broth isn’t creamy at all, unlike Midori’s. Because it tastes rather mild and balanced, it doesn’t deliver the same type of ‘punch’ Ikkousha’s ramen did. That place was saltier, more meaty, and generally heavier in every way. Touhenboku’s ramen, at least the chicken broth, is very mild. It’s somewhat easy to miss the flavour, but this may benefit people who want a mild dish. One upside of this is that finishing the broth didn’t leave a sense of saltiness in my mouth. Most ramen broths are salty enough to make me crave water, but that didn’t happen at Touhenboku.
Each ramen comes with a preset noodle thickness, you don’t get to choose. This one had thin noodle, but I think the server accidentally gave thick noodles for the extra. The noodles taste fine, better than typical noodles found in generic ramen stores, but I’ve had better ones. The chicken slices were flavourful, soft, and felt like good quality.
Full menu
One advantage that Touhenboku has over other ramen places is menu variety. They have a good amount of ramen dishes, but there are also specialty ramen, such as kimchi flavour, vegetarian, tomato, creamy mushroom, and several more. They also allow you to create your own by choosing a broth, noodle, and whatever toppings you want.
Additionally, the menu contains much more than just ramen. There are plenty of donburi and some curry dishes too, which might appeal for those who want something rice based instead of ramen. There are quite a few appetizers too, definitely more than other ramen stores I’ve been to.
Thoughts
Honestly, the ramen itself is nothing special. Ikkousha is literally less than 50 meters away, the ramen tastes better to me, and is slightly cheaper. If you want very mild ramen, Touhenboku might be worth a shot. But at the same time Ikkousha offers a low salt broth which might nullify that advantage.
In terms of ramen, I’m not too impressed but not disappointed either. It’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with Touhenboku ramen; this might just be me being used to saltier and stronger pork broth. The price is also slightly higher than Ikkousha, which adds to the diminished feelings.
Overall, Touhenboku still tastes better than the generic ramen places I’ve been to. It’s not the best, but still a step up. And with its significantly larger menu that can appeal to a bigger crowd, there is some merit to going here.