G/F Wo On Building, 8-13 Wo On Lane, Central
Tel: 2530 0600
Open: Monday-Saturday from 11am until they run out of noodles and soup (around 7pm, most nights)
Cuisine: ramen
Price: less than HK$100 without drinks. There's no service charge.
Ambience: our waitress was smiling and helpful, although she must have been tired of answering the same questions over and over again. The queue here is legendary, with waits of two hours or more at peak times. We arrived at 4pm on a work day and were first in line, so we were seated within 20 minutes. The place is tiny with only about eight seats inside (including four at the counter) and eight more outside.
Pros: there's a choice of four soup bases (plus a daily special), and you can personalise your bowl by choosing the 'thickness of taste', amount of oil and the texture of your noodles, and by adding raw garlic, sliced pork, minced spring onions or a spicy sauce.
Cons: although I'm open to fusion dishes (as long as they taste good), I didn't care for the Green King ramen (HK$90) with basil pesto sauce and parmesan cheese; it tasted like soggy capellini noodles swimming in a watered down pesto.
Recommended dishes: there's a choice of 'no', 'light, 'normal', 'heavy' and 'super heavy' for the thickness of taste, oil and garlic. We picked 'light' for garlic and 'normal' for thickness of taste and amount of oil, figuring it would be representative of how the chefs would want everything to be. We chose 'super hard' for the noodle texture, because we dislike soggy noodles. My favourite was the most classic: the Butao King ramen (HK$75), which was well-flavoured with pork bones without being too rich and heavy in texture. Like all the other bowls, it came with sliced pork, which was tender and fatty. Red King (HK$88) had what one of my guests called Japanese bolognaise - a rich, meaty red sauce with chilli and miso. The Black King (HK$88) is supposedly flavoured with squid ink, but we couldn't detect the taste of it in the soup. It was the most intensely flavoured, and I doubt any of us could have eaten a whole bowl on our own.