May 24, 2015

Hakata Gensuke

Agnes melbourne, suburb

I met Alastair for a quick dinner in the city after work one evening. It was a cold night and what better on a cold night than ramen? Not much, I tell you. So we took the opportunity to try Hakata Gensuke.

Fortunately it was early (ie just about 6pm) as I have heard stories about the queues at Hakata Gensuke. Even so, we did wait outside – fortunately while it was cold it wasn’t raining – for about 5 minutes while we waited for seats to become available.

We started with a serve of the chicken karaage – man, this must be the best value karaage in Melbourne. $5 for three big pieces. It came with a small amount of spiced salt, which was mostly unnecessary.

Alastair decided to get the black tonkotsu ramen ($14), flavoured with garlic and black sesame paste. I had a slurp of his soup and it was really creamy and fragrant thanks to the sesame.

Hakata Gensuke specialise in tonkotsu, but rather than try the signature broth I opted for the god fire ramen ($14), which is made with their special brand of “Spicy Fire”. There’s four chilli levels for this one (with 4 being the spiciest). My heat tolerance is okay – not bad, though not insane – so I went for level 3.

Oh boy Spicy Fire was correct.

Delicious but spicy, and on the borderline of my tolerance. I FELT SO ALIVE AFTERWARDS. It does make me wonder who eats level 4. Bow down.

We both paid extra for an egg ($2) plus a piece of seaweed ($1). The eggs were great and definitely worth paying for.

I’m pretty sure it was a good bowl of ramen but my judgement could’ve been impaired because my mind was muddled with chilli. I definitely need to head back and try it again.

Hakata Gensuke
168 Russell St
Melbourne VIC 3000
Phone: 03 9663 6342
Web: gensuke.com.au