by Timothy Pham
Yet another ramen location has open up recently in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The latest rendition to come to our fair city is Monta Ramen that originated from Las Vegas, NV. Their newest location is located in Richardson, in the Promenade North center. The menu is made up of six different flavoring of ramen ranging from the normal tonkotsu and miso to a spicy tonkotsu and kuro ramen. While there I ordered takana fried rice, some takoyaki, and the kuro ramen.
The wait staff told me that the takana fried rice would be a little salty due to the fact that takana is a pickled mustard leaf. Personally, I thought it was delicious and with the right amount of saltiness. The rice was soft and fluffy with just enough bite, and it was complimented with enough chashu pork to make this a meal in itself if not an appetizer to share. The takoyaki, a snack made with octopus chunks and batter was crispy on the outside, spongy and piping hot on the inside was a delight to eat. It was a typical flavoring of takoyaki sauce and Japanese mayonnaise, which isn’t to say that it was if anything normal.
The takoyaki here might be in the top five in Dallas to me. The ramen I ordered, the Kuro Ramen or Black Garlic oil ramen was amazing. This was more of a traditional ramen where the broth is thick and creamy made by extracting all the flavors from the pork bones. After eating the fried rice and the takoyaki I was slightly full, even then, the delectable flavor of roasted garlic still permeated through my mouth as I ate the ramen. Every spoon that I ate coated my tongue in a firework of flavor that to some, who are more use to thin broth ramen might be taken aback. Each bowl of ramen comes with two pieces of chashu, some kikurage (black mushrooms), bamboo shoots and green onion and can be further customized to your liking with kimchi, nitamago (soft boiled egg with soy sauce flavoring), corn, etc.
Needless to say, Monta Ramen is now one of my favorite places to eat ramen and I will be heading back soon. The only thing I hope for is that it will continue to taste the same as the masters in the back are heading back to Japan as soon as they finishing teaching the chef’s here how to make the ramen.
