Summary

Typically when we walk north on 6th ave towards Trader Joe’s for groceries, we stop by Cava across the street for a snack. We saw this seemingly new interesting restaurant opened with no one in it. The space is very bright, modern, and definitely has a Japanese cafe-chic vibe to it. This dry “ramen” place just opened along 6th Avenue between 20th and 21st Street.

This is another one of those “pick X of this and Y of that” type of restaurant except the theme here is Japanese.

Summary

This ramen place is near NYU and Union Station, so it’s very accessible.

The spicy miso ramen comes with ox bones and marrow broth, spicy miso garlic base, bean sprouts, roasted corn, toasted nori, naruto fishcake, soy braised beef, scallions, and thick wavy noodle. THe broth is super rich, far beyond what I was expecting. It’s not spicy per se, but the soup doesn’t go down super smooth for me. At the end, the spicy pepper would always surprise for some reason. Maybe it’s attributed to the oil and thickness of the broth, I’m not sure. Regardless, I thought the ramen was acceptable, but there are better ones in the city.

Summary

This place has a pretty decent ambiance.

The yuzu margarita was surprisingly pretty good. If you haven’t had yuzu before and like citrus, I recommend you get this if it’s available. I just checked their website’s drink menu, and it’s not on there. This drink wasn’t strong at all, and had a really really good before and after taste. I would drink this over any regular margarita any day.

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.