I found Underbelly after scoping out food near our Downtown hotel in San Diego. Since I was in San Diego with my husband and son, there had to be pescatarian friendly options and 8 year old friendly options. I gave my son the choice between ramen and kebab and he picked ramen. (Yeah, I know, we were in Little Italy, I should have probably gone for pizza, but he had pizza the day before. Gotta branch the kid's palate out a bit.) I was actually really excited because I've been craving soft-boiled egg in ramen for awhile so I figured I could steal a bite (or slurp) from his bowl.
So, after a short walk, we found ourselves at Underbelly which is a block off the beaten Little Italy path on the corner of Fir & Kettner. While the yelp site says that Underbelly isn't good for kids, that's probably because, from what I've read on yelp, it gets super busy and there are no spoons or western utensils (chopsticks only). I actually thought the Underbelly staff was nice to my kid (bringing modified chopsticks for him with his ramen) and I heard them say to a family behind us that they could modify the ramen to just do noodles and broth for the kids, but we were there at 5pm and I wouldn't bring my kid a couple of hours later when the restaurant was probably hopping.
Anyways, there are 24 beers on tap (probably as many beers as there are seats in the house...okay, maybe a dozen more seats) and you can do a lot of customization of your ramen with several vegetarian & protein based add-ons to the standard ramen choices, but since we were first timers, we ordered the Underbelly & Vegetable Ramen and a chopped seafood salad. I really wanted to try the buns too, but I had a feeling this would be too much food for us already.
Societe Publican Beer hiding out in a Lost Abbey glass
I know nothing about beer so I just linked an article on the beer my husband got. He really enjoyed it and found it refreshing after our short walk down to the restaurant.
Underbelly Ramen
The underbelly ramen comes with the "standard toppings" of bean sprouts, ginger, scallions (green onions--I actually heard someone ask her dining companion upon looking at the menu, "What are scallions?" hence the explanation), seaweed, and sesame seeds. Additionally, it has soft-boiled egg, char-siu (bbq pork), applewood smoked bacon & kurobuta sausage. (Note: The restaurant did not poke the hole in the egg, I did--trying to get a bite of it, prior to remembering my food blogging picture). The egg and the meat were great, particularly the pork & bacon. The noodles were a bit al dente for my taste and the broth didn't have a lot of flavor (there was soy, sesame oil & other condiments including shichimi togarashi to add savory/spicy elements to the basic broth, but I was hoping for more umami in the broth itself), but the meat was a winner.
Vegetable Ramen
This picture illustrates why you really shouldn't food blog when you are hungry because you forget about photo composition and mix everything together before eating. Sigh. So, the veggie ramen has the standard toppings and truffle oil, 4 types of mushrooms (shittake, hon shimeji, oyster & enoki) and white asparagus. I loved the white asparagus and liked the broth a lot with the truffle oil and a bit of the shichimi togarashi. A little doctoring was all the broth needed and it had a much better savory goodness.
Underbelly Chopped Seafood Salad
The chopped seafood salad has hamachi, white (albacore) tuna and salmon, seaweed, radish sprouts, and cucumber over a bed of mixed greens that are dressed with a soy miso dressing. It's then topped with sesame seed and what I'm pretty sure is hoisin sauce even though the menu doesn't say that (I did grow up in a Chinese restaurant). I actually really loved the blend of flavors between the soy miso and hoisin sauces and the seaweed salad was really good even though I'm not usually that into seaweed salad. The fish didn't have a ton of flavor and I'm not a fan of albacore, but there was a lot of flavor in the rest of the salad.
Overall, I loved the space, the concept and the service at Underbelly, and there's a ton of potential with the menu, but I wasn't sold on it. Then again, I'm now comparing all ramen to Daikokuya which is a really different type of ramen and restaurant (read much more traditional Japanese). Again, you can't win 'em all and if you're not super wedded to authenticity and you like good craft beer and quality meat, Underbelly might be a good place for you to check out.
No comments:
Post a Comment