Missing good ramen with an atmosphere to match? Johnson Kong reviews this great new place in Baldwin Village.
Toronto ramen aficionados, rejoice! No longer do our stomachs have to gurgle with hunger and envy as friends in Vancouver or New York gush about their options for restaurants serving Japanese-style ramen. Nor do we have to put up with feeble renditions of “Irasshaimase!” when we enter a Toronto ramen restaurant, or make do with pale limp noodles and chewy char siew pork slices that disappoints our memories of delicious Japanese ramen.
The city’s ramen scene has come of age with the opening of Kinton Ramen in Baldwin Village over the May long weekend. The third restaurant by the owners of Guu, the menu is all about the ramen and the drinking – there’s rice too, but who orders rice at a ramen bar? As with Guu Izakaya and Guu SakaBar, the staff knows how to make customers feel welcome and appreciated once they finally get a seat. Yes, expect to wait in a lineup to get in – there are only 30 seats – and your whole party must be present in order to be seated. The restaurant is long and narrow like Japan, and seating is named for the islands of Japan – Kyushu at the front, Shikoku and Honshu facing the bar and kitchen respectively, with a few tables at the back representing the open space of Hokkaido. It’s also hot like a Tokyo summer inside.
The bar wall is decorated with gold pigs, which represents the golden pork where the name of the place, 金とんcomes from. Choose from 7 ramen styles (miso, shio, shoyu, spicy garlic, vegetable, cheese, and Kinton Pork for extra pork), with options of regular/light soup and pork shoulder or belly. The top-quality Canadian pork is simmered and marinated, and customers sitting at Honshu can see the cooks blowtorching the meat for a caramelized finish before being served with the ramen.
My miso ramen (with extra noodles, of course) took about 15 minutes from order to arrival. The soup was rich and flavourful in its seething heat just beneath the surface, while the hunk of pork belly was soft and tender. But it is the ramen that signals the authenticity of Kinton Ramen – yellow, springy, and delightfully complementary to the pork and soup. For some, the one piece of pork might not be enough (hence the Kinton Pork option), while the light soup and pork shoulder options should be considered for those with sensitivity to fatty oils. But this is one place to check out if you are looking to indulge in the tastes and sounds of that favourite corner ramen joint that you left behind on the streets of Japan.
Just make sure you get your stomach there early to wait in line for a seat.
Kinton Ramen