H2A Noodle

I loved this place, but for everyone’s fyi, this restaurant has closed down, TEARS, TEARS, TEARS! Anyway, I haven’t found a great of a ramen place since their closing in May of 07. Thought I should give everyone’s a heads up before driving over. =)

H2A Noodles (Fremont, CA)
Monday, 8÷28÷06 (early dinner)
Our bill came to a little over $ 16 (with a 15% off coupon); we left a $ 20 bill.
Ambience (3): Inside was small, intimate, IKEA-​furnished, light and airy. Outside left a lot to be desired. When we got there, cars occupied 3 of the 5 parking spaces next to the restaurant.
Service (5): Fast and friendly — albeit, we were the ONLY customers at that time. I used a coupon we found in the Tri-​City Voice newspaper and our waitress took it without question and even made sure she pointed out the discount on our bill.
Food (4): The place touts itself as a «ramen» house. We were a bit confused about whether it’s Japanese or Korean. Maybe it’s fusion. I ordered the beef tendon ramen and my husband had the marinated beef ramen. At first, my husband was leary about the price, an average of $ 7.50 per entrée, but when our food arrived, each bowl was big enough to feed a family of 4. The presentation was pleasing and they weren’t stingy with the contents: lots of beef and tendon and mushrooms.
Overall impression (4): Our stomachs were satiated and we thought that we got great value for our money. We will definitely return whenever we find ourselves craving for some ramen.

I tried this place on a Saturday afternoon one time and wasn’t very impressed. I had the ramen noodles and they weren’t all that flavorful. I’m not sure if this is actually Japanese noodles; has more of a Taiwanese noodle taste. Either way, I don’t think I’ll be going here too often because there are better alternatives nearby.

I usually don’t eat lunch until after 12:30pm but for some reason today, I was dying of hunger at 11:30am and I didn’t even work out the night before. So when I realized my co-​worker dining culprit wasn’t back from vacation yet, I headed over to H2A.
I had driven by a number of times on the way to some of the area’s other dives. The parking lot is kind of cluttered and it is shared with a liquor store and a bar named Kirby’s (which I need to check out for diveyness factor). As you walk in the place is very minimalistic. White paint, plain wooden tables/​chairs and various modernistic art hang on the walls (half Rubik’s cubes?).
I started with a tonkatsu (battered, fried pork cutlet) appetizer that was filled with cheese. Had plenty of tonkatsu before, but never with cheese. Nevertheless it was well fried and very tasty. The cheese was very mozzarella like in consistency and lent a different texture to the normal tonkatsu. For my ramen I went with the chefs special which was a cornucopia of ingredients. I’d only had Ryowa’s ramen up till this point and H2A ‘s special was very complicated compared to Ryowa’s much simpler straightforward fare. The special came with tender beef brisket, bbq pork, katsu chicken, cherry tomatoes, pea sprouts, napa cabbage, seaweed and the ramen was served both traditionally and fried crispy as a garnish. I noticed that the broth had a sprinkling of roughly ground whole peppercorns that gave it a small kick.
The two people that run the place are pretty friendly, although very quiet and it looked liked the majority of the patrons were Asian (I heard Manadarin, Japanese and Vietnamese being spoken around me) which is a good sign for an Asian food establishment. They also offered a handful of curry rice dishes which I’ll try the next time I stroll through. A really good fast meal option especially for a cold rainy day as it was today.