Hakatamon Ramen is squished in-between some office buildings on the quiet side of Chatswood station (not the Westfield side), so you’re not going to come across it unless you specifically go looking for it. They specialise in Hakata-style tonkotsu ramen, which involves using pork bones to create a very fatty broth.
If you’re not a big tonkotsu person (I’m not - don’t come for me!!) they also have a couple of shoyu ramens on the menu as well as some curry dishes.
My partner had their signature Hakatamon ramen (18.8), made with tonkotsu broth:
He found the broth to be quite flavourful, with a nice blend of garlic and chilli. There was a generous serving of noodles and lots of meat in the bowl as well. He quite enjoyed it!
They do have one vegetarian ramen (13.8) on the menu, which I decided to try. It had a healthy serving of vegetables, including bean sprouts and carrots:
I do love eggs and bamboo shoots in my ramen so it is sad that vegos have such a different experience. As you would expect, the broth isn’t as rich with flavour as you would get in a proper meat-based broth. It’s more like a light, salty broth. But they didn’t do too bad of a job, and the noodles were great. For a vegetarian ramen, this was pretty solid.
We also had some takoyaki on the side as an entree. They didn’t heat it in the microwave for quite long enough so it did have a small cold spot right in the middle where it hadn’t fully defrosted. For some reason it didn’t come with any katsuobushi either which I found to be quite odd!