Raise your hand if you go to places that specialize in Hawaiian and breakfast dishes and you order the ramen instead ๐โโ๏ธ
Is it just me?
Plumeria Cafe is a cafe nestled in the Laguna Design Center that was created by the people behind Stacks Pancake House. They recently introduced a Yokohama-Style ramen that’s a rare find in Southern California, so I had to give it a try.
I’ve heard that there’s often a line here, but when we arrived at 11:30am on a weekend, there was only a short line that went quickly. There’s plenty of outside and inside seating, so the wait wasn’t too bad.
The ramen is available with roasted chicken or seared pork belly. I choose you, pork.
The ramen’s “konbu triple broth” was indeed salty and fatty, as Yokohama-style ramen is known for. I could understand if some people thought it was too salty, but I quite enjoyed it. You’ve been warned. The soup was on the fatty side, but was also smooth and pretty mild. The fattiness wasn’t overwhelming at all.
The one downside: the soup spoon. Instead of a renge, you get a standard spoon that’s tiring to drink soup with. I feel like I got a workout spooning the soup into my mouth about a hundred times.
The noodles were chewy and soaked up the soup well. The marinated egg was great. The pork belly was delicious and flavorful, full of porcine goodness. It was more like BBQ/roasted pork than chashu, and was a bit charred at the edges. I’m not an expert with Hawaiian food but I imagine that the pork added an Hawaiian twist to the ramen.
I have to admit I was a bit self-conscious about slurping my noodles loudly while everyone else around me was eating their eggs and breakfast, but nobody seemed to pay me any attention, so I slurped away.
If you think you can’t get good ramen at a breakfast place, you’d be wrong. If you don’t mind the saltiness, you’ll enjoy Plumeria’s Yokohama-style ramen. Consider bringing your own soup-spoon though…
Plumeria Cafe by Stacks
23811 Aliso Creek Rd
Laguna Niguel, CA 92677
(949) 900-6829
Hours: 7am to 3pm daily