Garlic…

I saw Sean’s post on the ramen he had that, in his own words, was “pungently swamped with a mega mound of garlic” and when I saw Phong Hong’s black garlic ramen, I knew I just had to give this…

…a try.

Inside, there were the noodles and three sachets…

…with the seasoning, the oil and the “special garnish” that turned out to be nothing more than just fried shallots, not the minute slices of narutomaki and dehydrated spring onion that came with the other flavour of these noodles.

I decided I would cook what they call an onsen egg to go with it and that was what I did except that this time around, I boiled a bit of water in a pan with a bit of soy sauce added to roll the peeled egg in so as to have a light brown exterior, not white. I also pan-grilled a few slices of smoked bacon to go with the noodles and I boiled some prawns in water and used the stock for cooking the noodles.

It did take a while longer to cook and once it was done, I poured everything into a bowl with some seaweed slices by the side, the prawns, the onsen egg and the bacon all on top, garnished with some daun sup (Chinese celery) from my garden…

The verdict? Well, I did not think it was anything to get excited about – it sure did not sweep me off my feet. The Tokyo Shoyu that I had earlier definitely had an edge over this one.