PANDEMIC PLATES - DINING OUT (BUT IN!) : TOKIWA RAMEN

RAMEN ENTRY 1: TOKIWA RAMEN

Welcome to our newest series: Pandemic Plates! Since dining out is no longer an option in YEG due to a certain Miss ‘Rona, we’re on a mission to find the best dining in experience that our city has to offer. Our high-stakes investigation will focus on DIY meal kits from local restaurants that we can whip up at home! Why? For starters, take-out and delivery doesn’t always travel well - plus, it can be pretty fun to get a little hands-on with your food, while supporting a local business in these crazy times!

Each post in this series will feature a review from one of us about our experience with a take-home DIY meal kit. Given the chilly weather, we thought - what better way to kick off the New Year than with some delicious ramen? Originally called shina soba (“Chinese soba”), this staple of Japanese cuisine has a surprisingly complex history with Chinese origins. Ramen noodles are distinguished by its kansui (a “mixture of baking soda and water” responsible for ramen’s chewy texture and distinct colour) and are typically served in a savoury broth with a variety of toppings. At least 22 styles of ramen exist, and fun fact - ramen has even been touted as a new “prison currency of choice”!

Our first ramen entry comes to us from the Brewery District - Tokiwa Ramen, reviewed by G!

Location: Tokiwa Ramen - 11978 104 Ave NW, Edmonton, AB T5K 0G6

Items on the menu: Tokyo Tonkotsu (tokyo style shoyu, aka soy, broth) and Black Garlic (shoyu broth with black garlic oil) ramen kits - note that these must be bought in multiples of two.

Tell me more: Tokiwa Ramen first opened its doors in the Spring of 2017, under the guidance of Edmonton restaurateur Tatsuo Asai (Banzai, Japanese Village). In a 2019 interview, Asai revealed that his passion for ramen and his dissatisfaction with the use of artificial flavours and preservatives in newer ramen restaurants helped inspire the creation of his noodle joint. To this end, Tokiwa Ramen’s soup is prepared daily using locally sourced ingredients whenever possible.

(On a personal note, I’ve never actually been able to eat inside Tokiwa Ramen as they close their doors when they run out of soup - which is quickly! Prior to Miss ‘Rona’s debut, I’ve swung by the Brewery District more than once, only to have my dreams crushed by their “Seinfeld-esque” neon sign proclaiming “No Soup”.)

Tokiwa’s ramen kits can be ordered online in multiples of 2 (mixing and matching flavours is allowed) up to 7 days in advance, but must be placed before 4:30 pm the day prior to pick up (i.e. no “same day” orders). When ordering, you will have to choose a 30 minute window to pick up your ramen on the specified day, starting at 11:00-11:30 am, though I also had a 15:30-17:00 window available to choose when I ordered.

After placing my order online, I received an email with instructions - essentially, you need to arrive at Tokiwa Ramen within the specified window of time, give them a call with your order number and wait for an employee to bring out your order to you. There is parking right in front of the restaurant, but also ample parking within the Brewery District shopping complex itself. (For anyone directionally challenged like me, who navigates by landmarks - Tokiwa Ramen is between Shoppers Drug Mart and Donut Party!) Check out Tokiwa’s website for more info at https://www.tokiwaramen.ca.

So, how was the ramen? First things first, I gotta provide a disclaimer: per the instructions that came with my ramen, Tokiwa Ramen’s kits are intended to be refrigerated and prepared the same day as pick up. I’m pretty new to the word of meal kits and somehow naively assumed this could be something I could freeze for later, so I already had dinner prepped for the night when I picked up my ramen kit.

My second disclaimer is that of the Gracilianca team, I’m definitely the most inexperienced in the kitchen, and also the most panicky. (If that’s not a recipe for success, I don’t know what is!) So when I arrived home, I shoved the ramen ingredients into my freezer with the proficiency and dexterity of a frazzled crab. Was that the right thing to do? Probably not - and in hindsight, I should’ve tried to take more measures to try to minimize freezer burn! If you try this kit at home, keep Tokiwa Ramen’s instructions in mind, and their intentions for same-day preparation. Due to my aforementioned frazzled crab-type actions, I’ll do my best to factor in potential user error into my review.

For our rankings, we’ll be looking at a few categories: preparation, taste, presentation, and value!

PREPARATION:

3.75/5 : Each ramen kit required the use of two pots; one pot for bringing the soup up to a boil and one pot for first getting the bean sprouts and bok choi ready, then cooking the noodles. The instructions recommended heating up the pieces of pork charshu and wood ear mushrooms in the microwave, but this frazzled crab doesn’t have a microwave, so I threw those ingredients into my soup near the end to heat up. I started with the Tokyo Tonkostu kit first, and not gonna lie, I was a little bit of a hot mess, running around in my kitchen, desperate to not overcook the noodz - though I attribute this to user ineptitude - and when I made the Black Garlic kit a week or so later, it was much smoother sailing.

Overall, I appreciated having instructions to follow, and they were easy to understand! My one critique would be that this setup is not too friendly to solo diners, since you have to purchase 2 kits at once, but the instructions ask for you to prep them on the same day that you pick them up, which would be too much food for most people.. If you want to be a renegade like me, you can freeze the kit, but may lose some of the quality - the egg did not freeze well (although if there was a way I could’ve packaged it better for freezing, let me know!). It would be nice to be able to have the kits designed so they could be frozen for later, or have the option to just purchase a single kit, for this reason.

TASTE:

4.25/5 on average - I would give the Tokyo Tonkotsu a 4/5 and the Black Garlic a 4.5/5. Both were very delicious, and I acknowledge these rankings might be even higher if I had them fresh! Very savoury and well-balanced, and the black garlic’s soup had an extra bit of umami that made it stand out to me. Highly recommended!

PRESENTATION:

4.25/5 - The packaging was a bit awkward to handle, as it comes in what is essentially a pizza box with the two soup containers held in the lid - make sure you have room in your car for it to lay flat on the ride home, lest you get any soup sloshage! As for the final product, while it’s hard to judge presentation on a DIY kit since it essentially depends on the DIYer themselves, it was easy to put together great looking bowls of ramen from these kits.

VALUE:

4.5/5 - I thought that for the price ($13 for Tokyo Tonkotsu, $14 for Black Garlic) there was awesome value - in fact, for both ramen kits, I had a decent amount of leftover soup that wouldn’t even fit into my bowl!

FINAL THOUGHTS: Would you get these kits again?

100% yes I would! Both ramens were pretty delicious, and this has only fueled my desire to check Tokiwa Ramen out in person once the pandemic is over (...it will be over sometime, right?? Cue the existential crisis!)

Disclaimer: This review is not affiliated with or sponsored by Tokiwa Ramen - views expressed are solely our opinions!