Hawaii: Marukame Udon

I like noodles, and I like tempura. My mom and I would pass by Marukame Udon several times a day during our trip to Hawaii and would see a HUGE line up at this place. Of course being hungry and curious one night, we decided to give this try a place.

Marukame Udon is a simple cafeteria style concept, you order your bowl of noodles and then pick out your tempura of choice.

From the outside, you can see all your choices and even see the workers making fresh noodles. With the line up getting longer by every minute, we concluded that this place must be amazing. We waited for an hour, anticipating a wonderfully hot bowl piping hot broth and fresh noodles. Unfortunately, we were in for a big disappointment.

Sure, the noodles were fresh, but the broth was disappointing, and it was luke warm. The tempura wasn't the best either. I think the only thing I enjoyed here was the tempura hard boiled egg that I dipped into some sort of sweet sauce.

All in all, not impressed. The broth could be so much better. The udon noodles of course were fresh as can be, but what's the point when the broth is luke warm? Perhaps they wanted the noodles to shine, so the played down the broth, but I really was hoping for a rich flavour from the soup.

This place was not worth the wait. The whole process is fun, but waiting for so long and ending up with a unimpressive bowl of noodles was such a let down. Probably will never go again, but it was an experience.