The weather's been really funky lately.

It's only now that the clouds have begun to clear up, but since the past few days have been gray and cold, the only food I wanted to eat is ramen. Ramen, ramen, ramen. Kind of like how this is the only song I can listen to right now:

As of late, D and I have compiled a list of food places to check out (wait for it!), and we decided to make the trek to Tamagoya Ramen House in LA (that's Lower Antipolo, by the way).

They had me at "Home Grown Taste From Hokkaido."

How to get there:

Take Marcos Highway going to Antipolo. Once you've passed SM Masinag (on your left), you'll arrive at the Sumulong junction. Make a left and when you see a Petron gas station to your left, make a right on the next corner (Soliven Avenue). You'll see Tamagoya immediately.

Luckily for us there was absolutely no traffic (considering it was payday and a Friday), and we got there from Katipunan in about twenty minutes, tops.

What immediately grabbed me was the look of the place. It was very cozy, with two floors and was very well lit, close to how I imagine a real ramen joint would look like. The booth we got was very small, almost like church pews! I prefer seats with lots of wiggle-room, so I guess we shouldn't have taken booth seats.

That. Is. CHEAP.

Considering most competitive ramen houses have nothing below 300 pesos on their menus, it took awhile for me to really process these prices. Was it really possible for a restaurant in Metro Manila to serve good food with big servings at these prices? We were about to find out.

D, still deciding what to order. Ultimately, we both decided to order the same thing.

The Stamina Ramen (P168).

I think that this dish was aptly named, because that is exactly what it takes to finish it. Each bowl could have easily fed TWO people! It doesn't look very big from these photos but the bowls are actually huge. The Stamina Ramen is a miso-based noodle soup with lots of vegetables and strips of hijiki (Japanese seaweed) on top. It could have actually passed for a Korean dish because it was so spicy.

What made this particular dish so good was the level of spiciness. The noodles were also cooked to the perfect consistency, and the bits of pork added another dimension to the broth. I overheard the server say that all the broths they used for each soup had pork in it, does anyone know if this is true?

D couldn't even finish his bowl! We didn't even need to get anything else because the bowl of ramen was enough for us both.

Some more things you should know about Tamagoya:

• It's not open on Mondays.
• The servers don't accept tips.
• They close after lunch (around 2pm) and open again at 5pm.

There are lots of other places I still need to try when it comes to good ramen, and I am definitely coming back for another round. You guys should, too!

Tamagoya is located at 2 Soliven Ave., Mayamot, Antipolo, Rizal.
 

(02) 861-8631