EAK Ramen is located on 6th Ave close to 14th. I used to venture here all the time pre-pandemic, and there was always a line or people. I was curious to see how the restaurant was like since. Back in September 2018, I thought it was one of the better ramen places, but now, EAK also has a ton more competition all over the city. We were able to walk in on a Sunday early afternoon around 4 PM. We were the only diners, so we thought it was cool that we can eat at non-prime times.

Summary

I don’t know much about this ramen spot other than it was on Chef’s Table, and how it really touched a lot of people’s hearts. So my review will be almost based solely on the food itself.

The pork musubi bites were surprisingly good. Each bite is packed full of flavor, although I am rather doubtful that it’s worth $5 a piece.

The Japanese fried chicken were an interesting spin on karaage. The crust was nicely crisp, and the sauce was very tangy. There was a little kick to it too. They served this with a sauce on the side that I don’t quite remember how it tasted like. I do remember that my first thought was that this was oversauced similar to how PF Chang’s would do orange chicken, but nonetheless it was decent.

Summary

This is a relatively new spot that has opened up in the last couple months.

The pork buns were surprisingly decent. I think they were a little expensive for each as is most Manhattan foods, but it was good.

What was interesting to me was lobster ramen. It had miso flavored soup broth and of course lobster meat with shells. They gave a shell cracker on the side, and they definitely did not skimp on the meat. They gave chashu and lobster here. Even though I am pretty good at extracting lobster meat, I never realized how annoyed I’d be at doing it out of a soup. I think I prefer more of the Boiling Crab style if it came to that. The lobster meat definitely was a good value for the cost of this ramen soup (I think like ~18$?). However, next time, I’d probably not let my eyes dictate over my common sense. I think it was a good idea, but for me I felt the work to extract the meat was not worth it.

Summary

Where to start with this. I loathe cash only places considering the price of this is not exactly cheap.

The U & I bowl was really good but not for +$20. The bowl was rather small although the ingredients were pretty fresh.

The flying pig bowl was the biggest disappointment I’ve had. The broth was just OK. It’s subtly different than the normal tonkatsu style broth. I also opted for an ounce of the jamon iberico. I added an additional onsen tamago, which is basically a sous vide egg.

Decent ramen noodles. Soup was a little salty. The egg was disappointing.

This is the old Mew Men place. Pretty good ramen. The spicy is actually spicy, and the broth is super flavorful. The only caveat is there is not a lot of stuff that comes with the soup. Just a few veggies, and that’s it. They should have some sort of combo or something.

Pretty good tsukemen. Get the spicy miso. Tsukemen seems fairly rare in NYC. Still looking for something similar to LA Tsujita.

Decent ramen. Got some super fancy ramen, and it was fat. Not the best though and it’s in a not so great neighborhood.

Decent ramen in the Greenpoint area.

This place was decent. Had to wait about 20 minutes. I think price wise it’s slightly cheaper than East Village stuff.