Orochon Ramen / Los Angeles, Ca
Orochon Ramen
123 S Onizuka St
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 617-1766
www.orochonramen.com/
Japan Town (aka J Town) in Los Angeles is one of my favorite locations to visit for some truly authentic ramen. I don’t profess to be an expert in ramen and am nowhere near as critical as some others are, but I do know a good bowl of ramen when I see one.
Having recently watched an episode of Man vs. Food, where host Adam Richman successfully takes on the Orochon Special #2 Challenge, I quickly put this place on my list restaurants to try out. So with great excitement, I finally headed off to J Town to try out what was touted as some of the best spicy ramen in town.
Orochon’s location is pretty standard for a small ramen shop. Relatively small and tucked away on the third floor in the same plaza as Curry House and Kinokuniya book store, the large crowd waiting outside was a good sign that there was good eating to be had.
Once seated, my buddies and I ordered the standard gyoza for appetizers and some draft beer for beverages. You can do no wrong with ice cold Kirin off the tap. The Gyoza on the other hand was a different story. They were served hot, but fell apart as soon as you picked them up with your chopsticks. In addition, they tasted like gyoza that I could buy from Costco. Needless to say, they were uneventful. Perhaps I should try something else next time?
On to the main course!
The ordering process is pretty simple. Select Miso, Soy Sauce or Salt as your soup base. Then choose your speecy spicy level. 7 being non spicy and 1 would be assumed as being pretty hot. If you wanted to, you could order extra toppings like eggs, pork belly slices, garlic, etc etc.
Here’s what we ended up order.
1. Miso #7 (Non-Spicy Orochon) – Non Spicy for those who cannot tolerate the smell of spice.
2. Miso #5 (Osae Orochon) – Should’ve been a little spicier than 7, but it wasn’t much of a difference. Jason ended up having to add a ton of hot chili oil, but still wanted a little more kick.
3. Miso #4 (Orochon) – Again, not much of a difference from #5 and had to add more chili oil. Choose wisely because asking to make your soup more spicy yields a waiter offering you chili oil and ground pepper.
4. Soy Sauce #1 (Extreme Orochon) – So after a lot of debating, I decided to wimp out… a little. Considering that this was only 2 levels below their spiciest Special #2, I felt this was a safe bet. At least I’d be able to taste my food!
Initial reactions when these bowls came in where “Diyam! These are huge bowls!”, but that’s where the excitement ended. While I enjoyed my spicy soup and its rather intense soy sauce base, the rest of the meal was rather lacking. From the pictures above, especially my #1 Extreme Orochon bowl, the meal consists mostly of the soup base with some veggies and thin slices of meat thrown in as filler. The noodles were decent, but nothing to get overly excited about. What I enjoy about a good ramen shop are noodles that you can’t find at your local Japanese grocery store. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case with Orochon. Perhaps it was the hype that was built up from seeing their Special #2 in its spicy goodness on TV or that I’ve had a bunch of friends bring it up as a place they wanted to check out, but in my honest opinion, Orochon Ramen is pretty overrated. There are definitely some better ramen shops in this area to be had. If you’ve got about 45 minutes to kill, I’d suggest you check out Daikokuya, which is probably one of my top 2 ramen restaurants in LA.
So after ordering a pretty wide variety of spicy levels at Orochon. I’ve come up with the following conclusions should I be tempted to come back and try their Special #2.
- Gyozas are rather “meh” and you should do without or try something else.
- Order your ramen a little spicier than what you perceive would be your tolerance. It’s not all that bad. Honest!
- Try not to be cheap about ordering the extra toppings. You’re probably missing out on what everyone else is boasting about this place.
