- A video review of Momosan ramen in Waikiki Oahu Hawaii.
I'm Chris, this is Yellow Productions.
I do travel guides that are fun, informative, entertaining,
and in this video, I'm be reviewing this restaurant Momosan,
which is the second ramen restaurant owned by chef Morimoto,
famous from Iron Chef Japan, Iron Chef USA.
This opened in 2018 in Waikiki,
and you may have seen some of my other videos on Waikiki
about cheap eats.
This is not cheap, but it's pretty good ramen.
Momosan is located right across the street
from Waikiki Beach on Waikiki is Main Street.
It is at the foot of the Alohilani Resort
on the second floor, is Morimoto Asia,
which is Morimoto's higher end Japanese restaurant
with higher prices.
The eating area Momosan is quite large,
well inside if not inside, inside it's kind of small,
but it's kind of big outdoor patio.
If you sit towards the front, you can see Waikiki Beach,
if you sit in the the back wall almost feels
like you're eating in the middle of a Hawaiian jungle.
And I do think the outdoor seating
is one of the reasons to eat here,
because how often you get to eat ramen outside by the beach?
When they bring you the menu, they bring you two.
They bring you the food menu
and they bring you the drink menu.
The food menu has a little saying by chef Morimoto
on the front of it,
but to let you know that their noodles
have been specifically designed to not get soggy,
but you should still eat them right away.
Ramen noodles are designed to eaten quickly
while the soup is hot,
before the noodles get sucky.
The second menu speaking of soggy, it rhymes with it,
is the sake menu,
sake drinks but on the front, it's a map of Japan
and it shows you where all the different sakes are from.
And on the back of the sake menu,
well, it lets you know that you can get the sake here
in a variety of temperatures.
Some places serve it just hot or cold,
but they will serve it to the temperatures
all the way in between and then got some suggestions for you
on what you should give a try.
In addition to the standard tonkotsu ramen,
they've got a whole bunch of different ramens,
creative ramens
and frankly I think the reason why you come here,
it's chef Morimoto.
Come here for creative things.
So you can branch out of the standard tonkotsu ramen,
that you can get everywhere else.
And they've got a variety of other appetizers
and entrees as well.
I should point out I think the best time to come here
is during happy hour, which is between five to 7:00pm,
if you like beer you can get frozen Kirin for $3
or a regular draft Kirin for $2.
It's a pretty good deal, because regularly priced is $7
for the draft Kirin.
And I don't typically drink beer but when it's $2,
how can you pass that up?
I started with the gyoza appetizer because I love gyoza.
Gyoza Japanese potstickers.
This is a very creative rendition of potstickers,
now they're not cheap.
This is $12 but it's a pork and chive gyoza
with a ginger scallions sauce on the top
and it's simmering in sake.
That's right.
When they bring it out to your table,
it is simmering and steaming and boiling in that sake,
because the iron plate that it's on is actually hot.
This was quite a tasty gyoza,
I usually have to dip gyoza in soy sauce
or something like that,
to taste it up a little bit,
but these required no sauce they've got the sauce on top,
really delicious gyoza.
For my main course, I got the Ton Ton Ramen,
which is a spicy coconut curry with pork chashu,
redmi soground pork, ajitama and cilantro.
This was quite delicious
and if you've had laksa before, Laksa,
it's like a Malaysian soup,
this tasted kind of like a Japanese version of laksa.
And I like laksa quite a bit.
The noodles we're good
and as Morimoto said at the beginning,
they were nice because they stayed chewy
all throughout the experience.
That pork that was in it, boy, that was some really tender
pork that has been cooked slow for a long time.
It also had an egg in there and the red me so ground pork,
they put it on top of the piece of lettuce
so that you can see it kind of all of the top
and then you can mix it in, to make it warm.
I really liked the Ton Ton ramen because
it's spicy but not overly spicy
and it's not overly greasy, and not overly heavy.
Frankly, it feels just right and afterwards,
and I'm shooting this voiceover just after hey ate that,
I still feel pretty light and springy,
not weighed down like a typical tonkotsu ramen
would weigh you down.
The Ton Ton ramen $16.
Okay, so all that being said, what's the final rating?
Well, those of you who watch my videos regularly,
you'll know I write things on a scale of one to five toffers
and Momosan is going to get four toffers.
Why four toffers?
Well the ramen was really good, but it's expensive.
The total damages for the ramen, the gyoza
and the beer for me, was a little over $30.
That is a lot of money even in Waikiki.
If the price went down then the rating would go up.
Would I eat here again?
I absolutely would.
Hey, you know and I also did a video about
the Momosan instant ramen,
and if you're wondering how this compares,
frankly this is a lot better, but it's a lot more expensive.
This ramen was $16, the Momosan instant ramen pouch
was about three bucks.
So if your travels bring you to Waikiki
and you're looking for some creative ramen,
that's not cheap, but is really quite tasty,
well definitely check out Momosan.
What I think is pretty funny though,
is this right across the street from a McDonald's.
So you go from high end and tasty to hmm
and there's a fan right there.
All right, very good.
So I hope they'll enjoy being on YouTube.
By the way, if you haven't seen my other videos on Hawaii,
like cheap eats right here you can click this one.
Find the links in description below,
to more of my Hawaii series.
Well, I won't say goodbye,
because I'll see you in one of those videos.