Continuing his search for a great bowl of ramen, Johnson Kong steps into Sansotei Ramen on Dundas.
For me, one of the delights on a cold winter day in Japan would be to
step out of the cold and dig into a steaming bowl of noodles at a
corner ramen shop. Nothing fancy about décor or style necessary – a
personal touch of history here and there perhaps. My favourite finds
were the holes-in-the-wall places where you were pretty much sitting
in someone’s tatami living room; often there would be an old TV
perched in a corner wafting the bland voice of an NHK announcer
reading the local news.
While there isn’t a TV (or at least one that I could see, anyway) in
Sansotei, as one of the newest ramen shops on the Toronto scene, it
stands out for its little-ramen-shop feel that I’ve been looking for
here since returning from Japan. Located on Dundas between Bay and
University, the sign on the store is so small that I walked past it
twice and had to look at what the window-counter singles were eating
to enter. Whereupon, I had to wait in line for one of the 34 seats –
though theoretically more people could probably fit on the benches.
(more…)