It punched me in the face just a bit hard. Also, I thought I detected soy sauce and too much of that. The maitake was also very nice, though again the same spice issue. But while the chashu pork was beautifully tender, it was not the beauty Mike Satinover offers, i.e., with a gorgeous, finishing char. Also, the egg was perfectly cooked, and I'll never complain when someone uses the lovely, chewy Sun noodles. Aside from those issues, some nice flavors, including from the addition of menma. I also found it to be just a bit too smoky. I just found the spice heat interfered with the other flavors just a bit. If I was king, I would've demanded one-third rather than half spice. We both ordered the half spice, me the shoyu, my sister the maitake. So yesterday, I went to High Five with my sister, arriving just before 5 and getting seated immediately upon it opening. But while speaking to Mike at the pop-up, he mentioned that he's a fan of High Five (mentioned in the article too). Two prior attempts to try its ramen failed as I was quoted anywhere from 2 to 3 hour waits and did not have the time to wait. Last weekend, I had a fantastic bowl at Nakamura in New York (even better). It was fantastic and reinvigorated me - easily the best bowl I've had in Chicago.
Then a couple of weeks ago, I got to try Mike Satinover's incredible ramen (featured in this Chicago Tribune article) at a pop-up at Paulie Gee's. LTH - we've missed the boat on this one.Įdited for typos and to correct the number of seats Part of that is because it only seats about 16 at a time, but the bigger reason is that this place is fantastic. High Five has been open for almost four years and still has ridiculous lines. There are also three other varieties: shoyu, shio, and maitake, the latter being vegetarian.
The restaurant strongly discourages people from ordering that one due to the intense spice involved. There's actually fourth spice level tonkotsu on the menu, but it's listed as a separate type of ramen, Kanabo Spice. I'm looking forward to going back, though next time I'm going to give the half spice a shot with the expectation that on my third visit I'll ask if they're willing to do a 3/4 spice. It wasn't just the broth that was great - the tender slices of pork, the flawless egg, and the stellar noodles from Sun Noodles were all top tier.
#Highfive ramen full#
That I liked it this much despite being full before I sat down has me especially eager to return. It took a few slurps for my mouth to adjust to the fairly jarring spice level, but once I did, I began to savor an outstanding bowl of rich porky broth that had me kicking myself for waiting so long to try this place. Our friendly server described the heat level of the Full Spice as the equivalent of spicy Thai food, which turned out to be, at least for me, a very clear and accurate description. The High Five Signature Ramen is a tonkotsu offered at three different spice levels, Full Spice, Half Spice, and No Spice. Faced with the choice of eating ramen while stuffed or coming back for an awful wait at a later date with no idea whether it was worth it, we headed back over. Still hungry, we headed over to Cruz Blanca, Rick Bayless' latest venture.Īround 9:00, just as we were wrapping up a mildly overindulgent Mexican meal, we received notification that spots were available in the small, dark underground ramen house that is High Five. We put our names down but left with no realistic intention of returning. We were given an estimated wait time of 2.5 hours. We'd heard the stories of the lines but figured the weather wasn't great, it was relatively early, and it was the middle of the week so we'd be okay. We got to High Five on a Wednesday evening around 6:45.
Familiar with the greatness of Santouka but faced with a carless reality, I decided to try something new and made plans to go to High Five. He gave two recommendations: Santouka and High Five. When craving ramen a couple weeks ago, I looked for guidance from Pigmon, the toughest ramen critic I know.
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