Awesome Sydney Ramen Adventure: Chaco Ramen

It was my final day in Sydney and I still crave ramen. So I walked around the city one last time before I found myself at the entrance of Chaco Ramen at Crown Street one bus ride later. It was a quiet, sunny morning with almost no people in sight before making my way into the store. There were also seats outside, but given how bright the sun is in Australia, I selected the indoor seats and found myself making a difficult choice ordering my choice of ramen. Before I get to the taste test, you all know the drill by now with another bite-sized history lesson of Chaco Ramen.

Brief History of Chaco Ramen

Opened in 2014 as Chaco Bar in Darlinghurst by Keita Abe, the store offers both yakitori and ramen with the goal to be leaders of the ramen scene in Sydney and Australia¹. Things turned towards a vastly different direction for the store in 2019 when Chaco Bar split and focuses on yakitori, moving to a larger premise at Potts Point. Meanwhile, the ramen side remained at Darlinghurst and rebranded as Chaco Ramen where it focused on Fukuoka-style ramen, and has stayed like this ever since.²

Into Chaco Ramen

Upon being seated, there was a tiny clipboard on my table. I flipped it over and soon enough, I was looking through the menu items and see what I want. For my final bowl of ramen in Sydney, I have to make it count and ultimately chose the Fat Soy ramen. Not sure if it includes soy milk, but realized that it actually refers to shoyu/soy sauce and that was what I ordered. I didn’t have much of an appetite for any side dishes anyways, with so much tonkotsu ramen I had making my tummy felt somewhat bloated throughout my time there.

Taste Test – Fat Soy (AUD20)

Fat Soy Ramen. Looks pretty promising at first glance.

As the cold air is getting to me, all I cared about was taking the first sip of the broth, and it was packed with a good blend of chicken and shoyu flavour. The sesame seeds do add a layer of nutty flavour into the ramen, supplying it with a bit more complexity in the dish to make it stand out from the other ramen I had throughout this series, so extra points for that.

For once, I’m glad that the chashu did not appear dry at all in Chaco. Sure, they were still thinly sliced, but at least there was an equal distribution of meat and fat in the chashu. They were very tender, easy to break apart when I picked it up with chopsticks. I was filled with joy upon taking my first bite out of the chashu, delighted that it didn’t taste like cardboard in contrast to the disappointing piece of chashu I had at Ichi-ban Boshi.

While I have a personal preference towards thicker noodles, the thin noodles here worked pretty well. The broth was able to cling to the noodles that they work great hand-in-hand. This made slurping the noodles a lot easier and quicker, and in Sydney at winter, finishing the bowl was essential before it gets cold. I know the store has a heater on, but I’m not taking any chances.

The rest of the toppings, like the spring onions, black fungus and egg were pretty standard but didn’t add much to transform this bowl of Fat Soy ramen into something special. But still, they’ve played their part in providing extra texture to the ramen dish, so no complaints there.

Final Thoughts

Personally, I find that the toppings provided in the regular version of their ramen is enough. No more and no less. And if I were to order the special version which will include additional chashu pork, a whole egg and menma, I would find it overwhelming and it’ll drastically change my opinion of the ramen greatly.

As mentioned back in Part 4 with Gogyo, I’d prefer that ramen stores include the best toppings, three or four at most, on their ramen, rather than adding too many toppings that might diminish the quality of the dish. After all, too many cooks spoil the broth, and this principle can be applied to ramen too.

Finally, we’ve come to the end of my awesome Sydney ramen adventure! Seven stores, eleven bowls, lots of fun trying them all. Well, time to close this series…

Or is it?

Let’s just say you should keep your seat belts on for one more ride. Find out more in the next release coming soon!

Location of Chaco Ramen

Address: 238 Crown Street, Darlinghurst NSW 2010, Australia
Opening Hours: 11.30am to 2.30pm, 5.30pm to 8.30pm (Mondays to Sundays)

https://www.sydney.com/destinations/sydney/inner-sydney/darlinghurst/food-and-drink/chaco-ramen ↩︎
https://www.broadsheet.com.au/sydney/darlinghurst/restaurants/chaco-ramen# ↩︎