Meat heavy – batu means pork – the Mega Buta Ramen includes spicy ground pork, pork charshoo, and pork katsu in a tonkotsu broth, which is also pork based. While Maru offers one of the more impressive and broad varieties of both vegetarian and vegan options, this dish is for sure not one of them.

Ramen is typically classified by broth flavor, with three especially common categories: shoyu (soy sauce), shio (salt), and miso. A fourth, tonkotsu, references the broth's base ingredient, not flavor.

Gyukotsu ramen turns out to be rare even in Japan, though it apparently has some popularity in the Tottori Prefecture, located in the southern part of the country.

While there are many good, humble bowls of shio out there, many ramen chefs see this as the most difficult type of ramen to make, since they can't rely on incredibly flavorful miso and soy sauce to provide the dimension their broth might otherwise lack.