Seasons greetings! The weather has taken an icy cold turn so it's only right that meals get warmer and soupier and slurpier. Enter ramen.
The ramen menu is a complicated beast and if I'm honest, I've only ever eaten it maybe once or twice. Seeing as there was a large group of us dining, we chose the venue through a vote and Shoryu on Regent Street won out.
There was a pretty significant wait for a table so we found a pub and reminisced for a couple of hours before we tried again.
This time the wait was a little less, anywhere this popular must be good right?
For those who don't know, Tonkotsu ramen dishes are usually broth based piled full of noodles, veg, and a soft boiled egg - one of many combinations.
While we waited for our mains, we worked our way through the starters.
The pork belly bun which was gone before I could try it.
The brussel sprout tempura. Surprisingly delicious despite tasting like crispy brussel sprouts.
The hakata tetsunabe gyoza (pork). Excellent.
I can't find what's clearly padron peppers on the menu but these were really good. The sea salt tasted chemically though but it went with the peppers nicely.
And last but not least from the starters menu, a rather unusual dish. This was the black sesame tofu. Never had tofu like this before. It had the consistency of barely set jell-o and the flavour of creamy peanut butter. Very good.
We also got the iced chicken wings to start but we finished them before I could capture them (bad bloger). I've had cold chicken before (usually the morning after a night out). These tasted just like that. Served on ice cubes, the wings tasted like cold breaded deep fried chicken. I didn't get it but maybe I was over thinking.
The mains arrived and I will warn you guys, ramen is delicious but it is tough to photograph. I can't remember which one this was unfortunately.
This one is the veggie option, the "natural" with a mushroom and soy broth rather than pork bones.
And my personal choice, the piri piri tonkotsu. So. Good.
It's not a great idea to have starters before ramen as ramen bowls are deceptively deep and plentiful. We fought a good fight and ate as much as we could. Bellies full, we gave up.
Until we saw the dessert menu.
We got two of the cheesecakes to share. This one was the yuzu (lemon and lime). Very refreshing.
This one was the matcha cheesecake made from green tea. Deeelicious.
All in all, I enjoyed the food at Shoryu. Unfortunately, the service was a bit of a let down. Our waiter didn't know what any of the dishes were which made ordering a little frustrating. Plus a couple of the orders were wrong and had to be corrected when wrong dishes came to the table.
Would also be useful if they'd let people put their names down so they get a phone call when a table is free rather than make people wait in a crawl space by the front door.
Oh well, good friends and good food make everything better so we left in grand spirits. Hard to be mad when your belly is full.
xxs
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