Bone Daddies Rock ‘n’ Roll Ramen Bar

I’ve been following the mania surrounding the opening of Bone Daddies Japanese ramen bar, which opened in November 2012. Bloggers have been raving about it, tweeters have been tweeting meet-ups and I have been dying to get down to check it out for myself.

When I found the little alley off Berwick Street, a throng of hungry diners had made it well before me and were queuing outside on a cold January evening.

Luckily I had made plans to meet @hungrybecs and she was already nearing the front of the queue so we huddled in the doorway smelling the sweet aromas wafting up from the kitchen and got excited about what to order.

Bone Daddies – What’s The Big Deal?

I have to admit, I’m not sure what all the fuss is about here? We ordered the soft shell crab. It was fine. Not a patch on the soft shell crab you will find at Song Que Cafe, Kingsland Road though.

We ordered a couple of ‘Maiken-Me’ cocktails (shochu, ume shu, watermelon, salt). They were quite potent and although fun for an evening out in Soho, they were just about the last thing to be sipping alongside a bowl of noodles and I found myself looking wistfully at the blokes across from drinking their Asahi.

Bone Daddies has a good booze menu with beers, cold and warm sake, cocktails and different varieties of homemade shochu, which sits on a shelf in the restaurant.

Bone Daddies – Noodle Soup

The crux of the menu is the ramen noodle soups which all come with bamboo, bean sprouts and a boiled egg. We deliberated over which ramen to order like a couple of food geeks (spot the bloggers in the corner taking obscure pictures of chopsticks on their i-phones), yup, that was us!

In the end I chose the ‘Tantanmen’ - with sesame, chilli, pork mince and bok choy in chicken bone broth as the waitress tipped us off to get this if we liked spice.

The soup did have a punchy spice to it with plenty of depth. I loved the wholemeal noodles and the sesame gave the meal a sweet, deep nutty flavour. Overall though with the minced pork and egg it was a bit too rich for me.

Bone Daddies – A Rockin’ Joint

To sum up, with its Rock ‘n’ Roll soundtrack and young, buzzy crowd Bone Daddies is certainly a fun place to meet a friend for a catch up but I don’t think I’d go back and spend over an hour in the cold just to eat their noodles again.

Perhaps I’ll rock back in the summer.

A Note on Imagery - or lack of....

Uh bugger. Something happened to my pics. They don't seem to be on my camera. I'm sure I had some good ones too. So I just wanted to say thanks to Wilkes888 as I came across this nice shot of a menu on google images and I've used it above. Hope you don't mind? : )

Visit the Bone Daddies website