Kuraya Ramen - Madrid, Spain

​No serious ramen place I have ever eaten at puts naruto in their bowl. FACTS

Naruto in a bowl of ramen is as bad as a fake label on a bag. It just screams of cheapness and inauthenticity. I know many places do it, but it's generally never a place that tops your lists later. Maybe places outside of Japan have seen too much anime and think you have to include it in the bowl to be taken seriously, quite the opposite....

Anyway, rant over.

I was dying for some real ramen after spending a month in Morocco where as you know pigs are considered so filthy you can't even eat them. Therefore, to refresh my stomach with porcine love I tracked down Kuraya, even tho I mean't to go to the spot right next door (finding out afterwards they were the same chef-owners). I ordered the Tonkotsu black garlic bowl and tapped my fingers.

Thinking back it had been quite a while since I ate a bowl of Tonkotsu. In fact, it was the disastrously underwhelming bowl in Naples. The one I tried to force from memory. 

Kuraya's bowl came served with a friendly smile from the Filipino waitress and I took my customery photos before diving in. Broth first, always, tasted pretty good but was thin. Noodles next, again, decent. The pork had a nice tenderness and flavour to it, not surprising since Spain elevates the pig to heights almost touching the hem of Christs garments. A bowl of promising elements undone eventually by a severely overcooked and unmarinated egg. Bummer

I tried one other Ramen shop in Madrid that fared worse than here, so of the two I tried I'd definitely recommend Kuraya. The broth could have done with some more "heavy taste" but i'm being picky here. It was a good bowl of ramen with a rather dodgy egg floating on top.

These recommendations are just personal opinions based on my palate, things change, chefs get fired or replaced, places open-close, relocate, so take it all with a pinch of MSG  and discover your own gems too. But please do try a few of these, they have been researched exhaustively.