Jirou Ramen — Restaurant in Seoul

Always on the hunt for a good bowl of ramen we visited 지로우 라멘 and had to wait about an hour as it was busy. We put our name on the waiting list along with our order.

I ordered the 폭탄라멘 with extra 차슈 as always and an egg. The broth had a nice orange and gold colour to it and the 차슈 was nicely charred. The extra 차슈 we ordered came out separately on the side and it was amazingly cooked with nice char marks. It was juicy and fall apart tender and it got my taste buds really excited.

I started off trying the broth and straight away you could taste the richness in the broth. It was packed full of flavour and then you get that kick of spice which elevates the flavour and it truly was a 폭탄 explosion of flavour. The broth clung onto the chewey noodles which also made this a glorious bowl of ramen. The 차슈 was a winner for me as it had such great flavour which again elevated the ramen to another level.

I'll be going back here...

Excellent ramen. I actually prefer this place to Oreno. Although, I did order medium spicy, and it was a bit too damn spicy for me. Next time, I will order the regular. Anyways, why do I think this place is better than Oreno? I love the pork here. It's marinated, and charred to perfection. It was SO much better than the pork at Oreno. Egg was better at Oreno. The yolk was a bit too set and firm here, and not runny like I like it. They also provided kim chee here, along with ginger. The broth here was really good. But, hard to compare because of how spicy it was. The noodles were similar to Oreno, and actually my least favorite part of both. They are both fairly thin, like lo mein style noodles. I've never had ramen noodles like it. It wasn't so good. I like the thicker, curly, chewy style kansui...

Jirou is incredible. I've eaten ramen all over from homemade noodle shops in Nashville, to Michelin-star ramen shops in NYC, and then back home to the best ramen I've had in Portland, OR, Jirou holds up. We had just gotten in from Vietnam where we ate incredible dishes with fantastic broths. Again, Jirou holds up. All I can say is that this was the best ramen I ate in Korea and possibly tied for first place for best ramen I've ever had (three way tie with Wu-ron's (Portland) and Mr. Taka (NYC). Absolutely...