Restaurant review: Ebi Kin Ramen in SoHo – souped up delights

Going against the popularity of tonkotsu ramen, which uses as its base a strong broth of long-simmered pork bones, a new Japanese ramen restaurant in Central is making their stock from shrimp and crab. Ebi Kin Ramen opened in 2014 in Tsukiji, Japan, where the world-famous seafood market is located. The Hong Kong shop is their first overseas outlet.

The Japanese chef uses sweet shrimp to make the soup, roasting the heads then putting them into boiling broth together with pig bones and chicken feet. We tried the Japanese spring onion ramen

(HK$85) with the shrimp broth, pork fillet, egg, dried shallot and seaweed. The soup with heavy shrimp taste is an absolute delight, and we drank every drop of it.

The ramen in crab soup (HK$95) is just as good. Boiled for three hours, the Sri Lankan crab soup tastes sweet and feels soothing on the throat. We like it for its strong taste of crab roe and the use of chicken meat, which is less fatty than Japanese chashu pork.

We also like the Ebi Kin tsukemen (HK$100) with shrimp broth, sakura shrimp and celtuce. The thick tsukemen noodles have to be cooked for eight minutes, six minutes more than those used for ramen, and dipped into the strong broth, soak up the heavy shrimp taste well.

The noodles at Ebi Kin are made on machines imported from Japan. Customers can choose the thickness and hardness of the noodles.