For the Love of...: ...Menyatai Japanese Ramen (Calgary)

Overall - 8.5/10
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Food - 9/10
Service - 9/10
Ambiance - 7.5/10

Recently, we stopped by Menyatai Japanese Ramen for the first time, for lunch.  Menyatai is a small restaurant that has a clean interior accented by bright greens and blues.  You get the impression that food is served rather quickly before you realize the plastic chairs are not the most comfortable.  I hope they might consider upgrading their furnishings down the road since other places who charge similar prices for their food offer more comfortable seating.  Despite this, we enjoyed the ramen and appreciated the enthusiastic and prompt service.

On this day we tried the curry ramen and the Shiyo ramen.  The soup of the curry ramen tasted like the Japanese version of curry- much less heavy on the spice, a bit more savoury and thick.  Served with the noodles were a tender piece of BBQ pork, corn kernels, green onion, half boiled soy sauce egg, bamboo shoots, a sheet of nori and fresh bean sprouts.  If we had to compare Menyatai's ramen to Shikiji's ramen, the ingredients in this ramen seemed to be prepared with more care and fresher, higher quality ingredients.  For example, the boiled egg was perfectly cooked, with a slightly runny yolk that somehow did not run into the soup when served to us.  As well, the BBQ pork was extremely tender, flavourful and preferable to the somewhat dry, thin version we experienced at Shikiji.  We suspect the BBQ pork is a rolled pork belly they prepare on site- at least it tasted that way.

Curry ramen

The Shiyo ramen had the same toppings with a different soup.  The soup is soy sauce based but not overpowering with the salt, as we have occasionally experienced at other locales.  I noticed on the menu they highlighted the fact their soups are "naturally salted" which I presume means they don't use MSG, which is always a good thing.  The only negative point on the Shiyo ramen, is the excessive amount of green onion.

Shiyo ramen

Overall a pleasant experience and we will be going back to try some of the other offerings on their menu.