Restaurant: Menya Tigre
Location: 2012 Sawtelle Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90025
Date: July 13 (and others), 2021
Cuisine: Japanese Curry & Ramen
Rating: narrow but pretty good curry ramen
The not-terribly-great chicken only ramen place on Sawtelle closed a long time ago and was replaced at some point by this curry based ramen joint.
The small menu.
The interior — although I’ve never actually eaten inside as they have a nice patio.
Tasty Japanese salad with the zingy ginger dressing.
Takoyaki. Fried octopus balls with mayo and okonomiyaki sauce. These were actually the first kind of food I had on my first trip to Japan 30 years ago!
Curry Tsukemen. Chicken curry broth with noodles and chashu. This is the ramen variant where the noodles are served on the side (cold) and dipped into the broth.
Zoom of the parts.
Curry Ramen. Chicken and curry broth ramen with pork and egg. It’s pretty good, but not as thick and unctuous as I might like.
Keema Bowl. Side bowl of ground meat curry on top of rice.
Chashu Bowl. A similar bowl of marinated chashu pork on rice.
Karaage Curry. Karaage fried chicken with curry and rice.
Surf & Turf. Karaage chicken and fried shrimp with curry and rice. This was solid curry rice, but it isn’t nearly as good as the late (and missed by me) Kimukatsu.
Overall, Menya Tigre is ok. I like curry and I particularly like curry rice. I’m actually very sad that Kimukatsu closed as that was the best Sawtelle curry rice. This is a passable substitute, but just not as good. The ramen is ok too, but not as good as Killer Noodle — which is by far my favorite except for its not-so-subtle GI consequences.
