Menya

Well, after a painfully long absence (why is Sunday always so busy?), I decided that it had been far too long since I had tasted non-instant ramen. School holidays have begun, so we were no longer bound by the weekend. This also meant that we didn't have to worry about the shops that were closed on Sundays.
The last time we were in Swanston Street, we set our sights on Menya. It looked like a good little place, tucked away in an alleyway leading into Melbourne Central, but it was tremendously busy at the time, so we decided to come next time. 'Next time' was yesterday. Determined, we hopped on the train and headed towards Menya. It was quite early still, but already the place was filled with hungry people morphing into non-hungry people. Interestingly, I only saw Ramen dishes and Rice dishes for sale. No soba, udon or side-dishes, just the happiness of ramen and rice. Already encouraged at the range of ramen Menya had to offer (most places have five at the most, there must have been at least ten different types of ramen), I was interested to note that the dishes were named after their toppings, and not their soup. Being unadventurous, I went with the good ol' Pork ramen, while my sister went for gyoza ramen, which was pretty much the house soup with dumplings.
A short wait later, and we found ourselves sitting in front of two rather tasty looking bowls of ramen. Wasting no time, I attacked my ramen, starting with the large chunks of pork that were floating on top of the soup. They were tasty, and tender enough for me to break apart with my chopsticks. There was some menma too, which I normally don't care for. I tried it anyway, and was surprised to find it rather tasty. Overall, I was feeling rather good about this ramen when I started on the noodles. There wasn't a huge amount of them, but it was certainly sufficient. They were quite good, with a lot of flavour, and an adequate texture. I finished them rather quickly, and started on my soup. My plan was to only drink a few spoonfuls, so I could get a good idea of the taste. It needed some soy-sauce, but after I added that, I couldn't really help but drink more than half of it! It was a pay-in-advance sort of thing, so once we were finished, someone came and took our bowls away (impressively quickly, I might add, given how busy it was), and we left.
But the fun didn't stop there. Next door was a place called "Harajuku". Harajuku is an area around a station in Tokyo of the same name. It's quite an awesome place, filled with cosplayers. Anyway, this was a crepe store. Not french crepes, but Japanese crepes. If you've never had one, it's a humungous, thin crepe, folded into a cone shape and filled with all sorts of goodies. My sister's had nutella and almonds, and mine (which I dubbed the 'suicide crepe') had strawberries, vanilla ice-cream, vanilla custard, and cream. People tend to think I don't have much of a sweet tooth, since I don't particularly like chocolate, but this sure proved them wrong!
Anyway, if you happen to be in Melbourne Central, head over to Harajuku and get yourself some crepe!

But onto the cold, objective side of things...

Information:

• Restaurant Name: Menya
  
• Restaurant Location: One of the little laneways leading out of Melbourne Central and onto Swanston St
  
• Ramen Ordered: Pork Ramen
  
• Price: About $8.50
  

Scoring:

• Atmosphere: 9/10

Awesome. A tiny little store in an alleyway. The only way it could be closer to Japanese ramen places would be if everything was in japanese, and you had to figure it out for yourself!

• Presentation: 9/10

Simple, but lovely. I thought the bowl looked balanced as a whole, and the entire picture was one of authenticity. The pork looked a little...meaty. But I guess that's sort of the point.

• Toppings: 9/10

The pork was some of the best pork I have ever eaten, ramen or no, and the menma was good enough for even me to eat it all. Did I mention that I love spring onions?
I did think that they used a little too much of the actual spring onion though. It gets a little tough and flavourless as you venture further and further away from the white root part.

• Noodles: 7/10

A good amount, nice flavour and adequate texture. Nothing outstanding though. These were probably the weakpoint of the entire bowl.

• Soup Base: 8/10

Very tasty to begin with. After I added some soy-sauce, though, it became supremely excellent. If only they'd added it to begin with...

• Overall Quality: 8/10

Despite its weak spots, I found this a very enjoyable bowl of ramen. After I was finished, I had a nice taste in my mouth, and a hole in my stomach had been filled. I left feeling happily satisfied.

• Value: 9/10

Very nice ramen, and for a very nice price. Easily worth $8.50.

• Total: 59/70

I have no major quips about Menya. The place itself is great, and the ramen is delicious. Probably the best bowl of ramen I've had since I was in Shin-Yokohama. Easily worth traveling across town for. And there were crepes next door! If you're in the city, I strongly recommend that you head over to Melbourne Central and seek out Menya.

PS: There was a long wall of stylised graffiti opposite Menya, which is very similar to the wall done by CAT in 'The World Ends With You', an excellent game by Square Enix, the makers of Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy. Just thought I'd add that, since it was a little extra thing that made me happy.