First off, the food takes longer to get at your table than it took for the entire ordering and delivery process that I described above took – somewhere around 20 minutes. Interestingly, I’d wandered by the place a couple of months back and the owner, or manager, was out front, they weren’t open for eating there at that point, but chatted with him, and told him of the experience, and he professed to be shocked. Claimed that everything should have been delivered hot and ready to go.

Ordered their “spicy fried chicken” bao. Good fried chicken. Not very spicy, but enough to tell it was there. Nice accompaniments. The bao bun good. I’d eat it again. 370 pesos.

The Shinjuku Special ramen was a little off for me. First, you can see it’s kind of congealed on top, and… it wasn’t very hot… just kind of warm. It either wasn’t heated all that well to begin with or it had sat, waiting to be delivered to the table, and started to cool. Flavors pretty good – it’s an intensely garlicky broth, with fried leeks and a “burnt garlic oil”. I’m not sure I was that fond of the burnt garlic oil, the burnt kind of comes through a bit too strong. Good ramen noodles, nice egg, and two slices of char siu pork. But it just kind of felt like it was missing something – like any sort of vegetable other than the crispy ramen and some chopped green onion. Maybe that’s the way Shinjuku style ramen is… it’s not a style I’m familiar with. I’d put this one as good, but no better than that, and again, not served hot. 650 pesos.