Silverlake Ramen
As the first major Tonkotsu ramen offering at the Irvine Spectrum, does Silverlake ramen match up against the other ramen competition in Orange County? Let’s give it a taste to see if it’s worth the hassle of wading through the Irvine Spectrum crowd.
The Classic
Ratings
Broth
Noodles
Chashu
Egg
Toppings
Overall
Date of Visit: April 2022
What I Ordered: The Classic with Pork
Cost: $14.50
Offers Extra Noodles: $2.75
Offers Extra Broth: $5.75
Review
Despite witnessing this restaurant being built and open many years ago, I haven’t gone until now. As the first major Tonkotsu ramen offering at the Irvine Spectrum, let’s give it a taste to see if it’s worth the hassle of wading through the Irvine Spectrum crowd.
Located across from Javier’s and near the theater side of the Spectrum, Silverlake offers a number of tables and booths inside and on their patio. Despite having more table space than most ramen places, they naturally fill up with the Spectrum crowd, and fulfill lots of take out orders. In fact, when they can’t keep up with the demand for seats, they will suggest you order take out.
At the top of the menu is The Classic ramen. I ordered mine with pork. This bowl comes with various toppings such as bean sprouts, spinach, green onion, seaweed, black garlic oil and half an egg.
Let’s dig in. I’ll try not to make fun of the fact that they give you chopsticks AND a fork. If it was at least a metal fork, they can wash it and produce less waste. But it’s a plastic fork, so even if someone doesn’t touch it, they must dispose of it.
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Their broth, by default, has black garlic oil in it. This gives it a smokier garlic taste than broth without it. The texture of the broth is amazingly smooth in texture and is entirely milky in appearance with the droplets of black garlic oil floating on top. The overall flavor intensity is medium, and is not incredibly rich or salty. The temperature is served warm, rather than hot. I think this broth does many things well, but it just doesn’t feel like an excellent perfect broth.
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The noodles included in the bowl are medium thin mostly straight noodles that are closer to soft in texture. The noodles are square in shape with a color that is closer to the broth than a vibrant yellow. They are softer in firmness and seems like they have been able to suck up much of the flavor of the broth, giving good flavor on their own, despite not having strong noodle flavor.
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This is one of those cases where the sun is no greater than it’s components. The broth provides all the flavor and the noodles are just... there. If this were a group project, the noodles just put their name on the project, while the broth is the actual one giving the presentation. The noodles are too soft to provide an interesting texture, and contribute no additional flavors on their own. Fortunately, the broth is pretty tasty and did a good job.
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Included in this bowl is one thiccc strip of pork belly. And when I mean thick, I mean thiccc with three C’s. The flavor is not heavily marinaded and has great natural pork flavor. The fatty texture instantly coast the tongue with unbelievable richness and is unforgivably a thick piece of meat. The meat itself is not dry and falls apart with little give, while not dissolving the moment it makes contact or falling apart in the bowl. Well done.
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Half an egg is provided in the bowl. Visually it appears to be well prepared, with a yolky center and a marinade that permeates to the center. However the flavor isn’t that great. The marinade dominates the flavor of the egg, and it isn’t even that great either. The flavor profile is flatter and does not have savory or sweet notes. The cooking preparation was well done, but I’m not a fan of the flavor of the final result.
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This is one of those cases where I think the toppings are useless. The spinach just isn’t that great, the bean sprouts annoyingly get mixed up with the noodles, and I think the nori is better decoration than it is at contributing to the flavor. Although, the black garlic oil is pretty good.
Overall: 7/10
Would not recommend.
There are many words I have, I just need to decide where to start. I should mention that I found a whole edamame in my ramen noodles. Not the bean part, the whole thing, peel and all. I didn’t order edamame, it’s not even an optional topping. And it was buried in the noodles, so it’s not like it accidentally fell in on top.
The reason I complained about the temperature of the broth is that if you are not a fast eater scarfing down your bowl of ramen, by the time you get to the end, the entire bowl is lukewarm and below optimal temperature. So mid-meal, your bowl of noodles becomes not great. Even I’d have a hard time letting my parents down that fast.
The broth and chashu undeniably have good flavor. Silverlake makes the intentional choice to include black garlic oil in their classic ramen, and only their classic ramen. No other bowl includes it by default. There is nothing wrong with this, it’s just an interesting observation. The black garlic is well balanced and doesn’t blow out the flavor of the bowl, but adds a deep smoky garlic richness on top of the creamy flavor of the broth. The broth is amazingly smooth in texture and has a well balanced flavor. However, I take issue with the temperature, who’s problem is exaggerated by the fact that the bowl is wider than it is deep, so it cools off even faster.
The noodles were completely uninteresting and are just existing.
The chashu did put up a good performance, with excellent flavor and texture. You are served a thiccc piece of pork belly that can easily provide four very rich bites of fatty chashu. The marinade is light, revealing a sweeter note, rather than a saltier soy flavor.
My thoughts on the toppings included with the bowl is that they didn’t provide anything positive of value.
If you are driving to this area specifically for ramen I dont think that Silverlake is worth it to navigate through the Spectrum crowd or parking for. Go to Marufuku ramen across the street. If you are already at the spectrum, it certainly is an option amongst many.
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