Hapa Ramen is like Star Wars Episode One

Hapa Ramen is a new food stand that is slated to open at the San Francisco Ferry Building this summer. Now being a Ferry Building stand there is a level of expectation that is comes with that. For the most part the new breed of food stands that are coming out have been amazing. Namu, Tacolicious and others have all had exceptional food with impeccable execution. Sadly, Hapa Ramen’s preview event that occurred tonight was far from either.

I won’t talk too much about the service issues that occurred. To summarize those, the event began at 6:00pm, I got there around 6:20. From that point until we were seated was almost 4 hours. Afterwards it took 45 minutes to get our food, for a grand total of almost 5 hours waiting. As a final note on this we were the last group to be served.

When I first got the ramen the portion incredibly small, about a quater of the size that one would get at Katana-ya or Tanpopo, at equivalent prices. The price for a bowl of “Everything” ramen was 13 dollars. To add insult to injury, by the time we were seated they ran out of pork so the “Everything” ramen became the “Almost Everything” ramen. To be honest though even if the pork was included I don’t think it could have salvaged this bowl of food. The aroma that came from the ramen was somewhat funky. It had the slight aroma of a ramen broth, but was dominated by something else that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Everything was generally lukewarm like it had been sitting on a shelf for 30 minutes to cool down before serving.

The noodles, which are hand made, were mushy and lacked texture. It was if they noodle was overcooked to the point that they were barely holding their shape and as soon as you put them in your mouth they would break apart. The broth was another big issue. There was no flavor whatsoever, which gave it a watered down taste. I’m not sure if this was supposed to be a shio, shoyu, or tonkatsu style broth, but it didn’t taste like anything. I had to add a lot of togarashi for it to even remotely have any flavor at all. There was also an unpleasant aftertaste that made it hard to finish. It was almost as if they put unwashed gobo into the broth which created an almost dirt like taste.

While the men and the broth were complete disasters, the topping didn’t escape the ramen hell either. The karaage was flavorless, it would have been less offended if they would have just put boiled chicken down. The egg not bad, and the peas were okay. But the green onions were poorly chopped, looked liked they tried to slice them thinly, but ended up getting a few large uncut portions. The summer vegetables either rhubarb or celery was so chewy that it felt like it was gnawing or a piece of bark.

While I can attribute a lot of the problems to being just a test run and being the end of the night, I feel there are some core problems here for ramen purist that cannot be resolved without a whole reworking of some of the recipes. With that in mind I feel that this could be a good “Ferry Building Ramen”. The toppings that were included are not the items one would traditionally associate with ramen in the first place. The broth doesn’t invoke in my mind anything associated with the regular ramen flavors either, but they do go well with the whole organic, locally sourced vibe of the Ferry Building. For people who have never had real ramen before, or their only experience with it is the store bought instant stuff, then this might be amazingly tasty.

This whole experience can be summed up in the analogy of the title. There was so much hype in the blogosphere, and the lines and wait were so long that it is impossible to live up to that.

Final Rating:
1/10
The peas and egg were the only good things. This is so far from what I would consider ramen that it should be called something else.