Totto Ramen, W. 52nd Street and 9th Avenue in Upper Hell's Kitchen

[ALB]

Hi all- Thank you for your advice and suggestions! I apologize for the delay in the write up.. parent/teacher conference week is a killer.

So.. the blizzard kept our wanderings to Manhattan but I have one new place to put on the radar for DRers... Totto Ramen on 51st between 8th and 9th. We were looking for a hot dinner and found it on urbanspoon.. it was really great.

A basement 20 seater where everyone who works there communicates in Japanese. 10 seats at tables, 10 at the bar next to 3 giant pots of broth and 3 large Japanese men assembling the bowls for all. We both had the chicken broth with chicken and minimal add-ons but I would go with pork next time after watching them crisp a tray of the pork meticulously with a blow-torch.

The broth was incredibly flavorful and the house-made noodles still had a nice bite.

Some notes- cash only (ramen about $10) and enter the covered basement steps and put your name on the unattended clip-board and DO NOT LEAVE. If you leave, they move on. The line moves fairly quickly as it doesn't take that long to eat/drink a bowl of ramen. I will visit this place again on my next trip, even if I am not staying in midtown/hells kitchen.

http://tottoramen.com/

[goodeats]

TOTALLY agree with the review above. And do go to the W 51st location instead of the W 52nd Street location because it is slightly larger than its original location of the latter.

A bowl of ramen sets you back about $11-13, iirc, which is pretty reasonable given the portion size.

Somewhere along my eating expeditions, I decided the best way to judge ramen was by a restaurant's vegetarian order. This place did not disappoint. The broth was rich, clean, and flavorful. My only disappointment was how chunky the veggies were cut, which made it a bit more difficult to take single bites of.

Their other stuff looked good, but seeing how this was my second bowl of ramen for the day (I had a disappointing bowl at another place to be reviewed at a later time), I couldn't stuff anything else.

Still cash only. Service is also still quick, efficient, but very friendly.

[dinoue]

Ate a late night second dinner after a show (Allegiance if you are going up in the next two weeks before it closes, it's fantastic). We were a group of 11 and they split us up to seat us as the place is pretty tiny, but several of us got in pretty quickly for the one larger table they have that can seat 6. We bypassed some smaller groups of two that quickly got seated at the counter.

I got the spicy miso ramen which is very hot. Comes with a big blob of spices and one of miso paste that you mix in. The noodles were perfect, nice amount of chew to them. Garnished with onions, egg and three nice pieces of char siu.

In the non-miso ramens, they have a more straight noodle which was also nice, but I found I was much happier with the wavy noodle that came with my bowl.

With tip, around $16 per person for a bowl. Definitely a good option for ramen in NYC, though I've not tried any of the other hot places. We tried Ippudo and their wait list was longer than they had likely seating before closing. Totto is more like what I feel traditional ramen places should be like. Eat a quick bowl and get out, rather than the gourmet experience so many places try to go for, but also lead to people taking forever to eat something that should be eaten in a few minutes.