While back in San Diego over Christmas, my family decided to warm ourselves up on a chilly day (aka dropping below 60 degrees) with some delicious bowls of ramen! We went to Tajima 2 and ordered 4 bowls of the Kakuni Ramen (pork belly & egg) with thin cut noodles and the original Tonkotsu broth along with a squid appetizer and scallop croquettes. Personally, the scallop croquettes were my favorite - I'm amazed at how the outside can maintain a perfect crispyness without getting soggy, yet the inside breaks open into a tasty scallop mix. As for the ramen, the pork belly and egg were so tender and flavorful and the noodles were absolutely divine. One issue we had, though, was that the broth was a little bit on the blander side. Ramen is often measured by the quality of the broth and I would have much preferred a richer taste. Nevertheless, it was still a solid bowl of ramen and I would definitely return!
Photography Comments / Critiques:
One thing that I wanted to test out in this restaurant was shooting in low light - even with the low aperture, I had to turn up the ISO pretty high. The croquettes photograph turned out the best (also due to the amount of depth I could get) and was shot at f/2.2 1/50 ISO3200. For both the ramen and the squid I had to up the ISO to 12800 in order to accommodate an f/4.5 aperture which makes the photo so much grainier than I had anticipated - it's hard to tell when you're quick shooting and just looking at your screen!
Also, I recently discovered that for my Nikon D3100, the autofocus assist light that goes off when you press halfway down on your shot can be turned off! There have been way too many times I look obnoxious in a dimly lit restaurant and wish I had known that.