Totto Ramen in NYC

The food culture of New York is famous with diversity. Since New York is the biggest city, as well a significant financial center, in the world, there are lots of immigrants living in New York. When these immigrants moved to USA, they built their own regions, such as little Italy, China town and so on. Hence, when we wander in New York City, we can find lots of restaurants providing exotic cuisines. However, Japanese restaurants are definitely popular choices among New Yorkers. One of the most popular one is Totto Ramen, and there are always lots of people waiting in lines before it.

Signboard of Totto Ramen

My friends and I visited Totto Ramen in the summer of 2013. We arrived at otto Ramen at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Surprisingly, there were already around 20 people waiting on the pavement in front of Totto Ramen. We even needed to write our names in the 2^nd page of the waiting list. However, I was not a big fan of roman in fact, for the soup of roman is too salty for me. At that time, I was really curious why those New Yorkers were fascinated with Totto Ramen? In addition, Totto Ramen was cramped for space, thus, every one needed sit closely with each other. Being frank, Totto Ramen wasn’t a restaurant which attracted me lot at  the first glance.

Always crowded in Totto Ramen

After 2-hour waiting, it was our turn to have a bowl of ramen in Totto Ramen. I could finally revealed the magic power of the ramen in Tooto Ramen. There are three key factors in a bowl of delicious ramen: noodles, soups and grilled pork. The noodles in Tooto Ramen were made by their own cooks. These noodles were thicker than ordinary noodles, as a result, when these noodles soaked in the hot soup for a while, they would still be chewy rather than over tender. Moreover, the thicker noodles had better texture, and we could taste the savor of wheat after chewing these noodles for couple minutes.

Noodles in Totto Ramen

Besides the noodles, the soup also plays an important role in a bowl of delicious ramen. Totto Ramen put a whole chicken and onions in the boiled water to simmer for chicken broth. Comparing with the soup simmered with pig bone, the chicken broth is usually less greasy. People could smell the aroma of the chicken broth even they just stood around the entrance of Totto Ramen. If you are a lover of spicy odor, you can also add their special chili oil in the soup or even try to order a ramen with spicy soup.

Chicken broth 

Last but not least, as a meat-lover, I think grilled pork is the essence of ramen. First, the cook need to choose the top pork belly, which has more fat, so after grilling the pork, they won't become too hard and dry to eat. Furthermore, the cooks in Totto Ramen used a little spray gun to spray the fire on the pork belly as the same time as grilling the pork on the barbecue grill. The reason why they used the spray guns was to control the fire precisely. By doing this, they could make sure all the surfaces of the pork belly were grilled and the surplus gravity was grilled out.

The way of grilling pork belly

Grilled pork

To sum up, although the tastes of Totto Ramen are still kind of different from traditional Japanese ramen, it still worth people giving it a try when missing the orient cuisine in New York. Nonetheless, if you want to have a dinner in Totto Ramen, you have better to arrive there as earlier as possible. If you can, don't forget to buy a cup of coffee on the way to Totto Ramen because you will need to wait for it at least an hour all the times!!!!!

People always lining for Totto Ramen