The Love of Beer
- Photo by Marie Tran-McCaslin
The folks at Yakitori Yakyudori and Ramen have their hands full. Their Hillcrest location has closed and they’ve opened another restaurant, called Hinotez. At Yakyudori in Kearny Mesa (4898 Convoy St., Suite 101), yakitori—skewered grilled chicken—is served after 5 p.m. and there’s plenty of ramen to go around, but one of my favorite times to visit is during lunch. Come at the right time and the restaurant is quieter after the lunch rush, perfect for a bowl of ramen, time with a friend and a break from the daily grind.
Yakyudori’s lunch menu is one of its strengths, combining a bowl of ramen with something extra each day. And, if you want, say, Monday’s special extra on a Thursday afternoon, it’s available at an additional cost. On a recent visit, I settled down to a cold glass of barley tea and waited for my friend while perusing the menu. The lunch special that day was barbecued pork, grilled bits of pork belly drizzled with sauce and served on a bed of finely shredded cabbage. The cabbage, in turn, is resting on top of a bowl of rice.
Unlike the lunch-special extra, the ramen is your choice from the menu. I chose the shio ramen while my friend settled on the tonkotsu. Our rice bowls were the same, but our ramen contrasted with the shio’s translucent, salt-based broth against the denser tonkotsu broth made rich by the collagen and fat cooked out of pork bones.
My shio ramen was a study of textures, from the right amount of chew to the noodles, the crunchy sliced scallions and the tender slices of pork. corn lends sweetness to the salty shio broth and adds to the almost inexplicably delicate balance between the saltiness and the depth provided by everything else. The only thing missing was hard-boiled egg—they ran out of it by the time I arrived.
No hard-boiled egg? I was brokenhearted, but then again, ramen is the consummate comfort food.
Write to mariet@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.
