When we ate at Ogawa, we were talking to the restaurant manager in Miami, and he said his old friend ran this restaurant in NYC. Apparently this restaurant originally existed in Queens, but it moved into Manhattan. At last, we had a Friday where didn’t really have any plans, so I suggested this restaurant. I was able to book a table for 2 for 6:00 PM on a Friday evening a few days in advance without issues. This restaurant is known for their yuzu flavored ramen.
As a huge fan of ramen and tsukemen (i.e., dipping noodles), I enjoy trying to find all the good tsukemen. I’ve been to a few places already both in Los Angeles and in New York City, but the thing that really caught my eye here was that his restaurant says it is the “original tsukemen since 1951” whatever that means. The original location actually started out in the bay area in Northern California, and it has some notoriety that west coast people have raved about. They opened an outlet here in NYC fairly recently, so I thought I’d stop in and give it a try on a brisk, cold Wednesday evening.
For a free night on the way back from work, I stopped by this semi-new tsukemen place. For the uninitiated, Japanese tsukemen is basically ramen, except the soup is served on the side, and the noodles are thick by default. Yasubee is actually a restaurant chain with over 80 locations in Japan. They opened a NY location in Flushing, and this Chelsea location is the second one. I walked in on a Wednesday at 6 PM, and the restaurant barely had anyone in. Yasubee is part of the “Kung Fu Tea” family, which includes TKK Fried Chicken and Kung Fu Tea products.
I remember a few years ago before the pandemic, TabeTomo was a very new tsukemen centric restaurant, and it was always on my try list. However, I never was able to make it to the restaurant due to how sparse tsukemen was in general in Manhattan, as well as, the restaurant was closed at random times when I tried to visit. Finally tonight, I got a chance to try this out and to compare against other tsukemen places.
My partner on a late Saturday evening was planning to get some food with their friend, so that means I can venture out on my own. As people know from reading this site, I’m a ramen fiend. I love to try all sorts of ramen, and I never mind eating it by myself. This ramen location recently opened only a few weeks ago, and I definitely prefer early dinners. It’s located very close to the 7 train Court Sq stop, and is just around the corner from the Long Island City Trader Joe’s.
Kajiken is located a few streets south of Bryant Park. I originally was trying to do a walk into Tonchin, but they told me there was a 1-hour wait for a single bar seat solo. Irked, I walked towards Bryant Park, and I found that there’s this ramen place that was on my list to try. Interestingly enough, they have both soup-based ramen and dry ramen. Their dry ramen is like most other dry-noodle things where there is some oils and mixtures at the bottom of the bowl, and you simply can mix everything. I was able to walk in about 30 minutes before closing time and was seated without issue.
The Kyuramen restaurant chain has been slowly making its way throughout the greater NYC area. They just opened a location out in Long Island City which is not too far from where we live. This restaurant had construction signs early in the pandemic and just never opened until now. We thought we would be able to get seated right away on an early Sunday afternoon, but they checked us into Yelp and we had to wait around for about 15 minutes for a table of 2.
What is tsukemen (つけ麺; pronounced “skee-men”)? It’s basically thick udon served cold with a side of a thick soup/broth for dipping. In Los Angeles, I frequented a place in Sawtelle near the Westside called “Tsujita” that also specialized in something similar. Okiboru recently opened in Manhattan, and it’s famed for being on Michelin’s Bib Gourmand list in Atlanta. They do not take reservations, so when we arrived at this location at 5:15 PM on a Friday, the line outside was about 10 parties ranging from 2 to 6 people per group. It took us about 30-45 minutes of wait before we were seated.
This ramen place is pretty close to where I work. It’s located on 48th and 6th ave and is very close to Rockafeller. There is no way you would know of this restaurant unless you were either intentionally looking for it, or if you saw the ground floor sign that indicated this was upstairs. I had some time during my lunch, and decided to take a quick spin to see how this was compared to other ramen spots.
I was supposed to meet my partner the next block at Casa Enrique, but for some reason they mistook a Japanese restaurant for a Mexican restaurant and ended up here. They found it weird that there were no lines, whereas I went to Casa Enrique and encountered a line. Because Casa Enrique doesn’t take walk-ins and the line was getting rather long, we decided to just eat here, and to my surprise, it was a good substitute.