I love ramen. Always have. More on that at the bottom of the page. This is a place I created to record the ramen places I’ve tried, and to organise them into some sort of hierarchy.
| Name | Location | Classification | Notes | Visited |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kanada Ya | London, Central St Giles | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Be still, my beating heart. A place I used to go for coffee back in the days of the Bloomsbury Office has now been inhabited by a perennially busy ramen joint they’ve somehow squeezed a dozen-ish school-desk-plan covers into, and they consistently dish up THE PRIMO RAMEN I’ve ever witnessed. Never a wrong move. They are the holotype. | About half a dozen times since 2023. |
| Matsudai Ramen | Cardiff / Home Delivery | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | These geniuses have found a way to get legendary ramen TO YOUR HOME. Superb noodles, breathtaking char-siu, complex flavour oils, and oh my word – those broths. Divine. Update: Their restaurant is (predictably) equally excellent, if not better. Love love love. | Restaurant: twice and counting Delivery: I’m a monthly subscriber 😁 |
| Tomo No Ramen | Bristol | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Small outfit on Old Market with fairly restrictive hours and a bookings-only policy, it’s not easy to get into spontaneously. Delicious though and well worth making the effort. | 4 times and counting |
| Mr Noodle | Bristol | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Probably the most Bristol option on the list – a couple of Michelin trained chefs who took up cooking ramen for fun over lockdown, they don’t really seem to have a premises… you can sometimes order takeaway, and at one point they had a setup with a pub over the road where you could order ramen at the pub and they’d bring it across. Pub’s been taken over now though. Tasty though. Top drawer. | Once. Not sure they’re still operating. |
| Tonkotsu | London, Notting Hill | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Apparently this place is a chain, and I for one don’t care a jot. They know what they’re doing. | Once, 2023. |
| Four Wise Monkeys | Bristol | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Described as “the dirtier sibling of Seven Lucky Gods” – 4WM only has a couple of noodle options on the menu, but having tried it and felt a little bit bad after having done so, I can’t wait for an excuse to go back and do it all over again. Officially I think their noodles are closer to Dan Dan noodles than ramen, but they’re rich, flavoursome, and delightful. | 4 or 5 times since 2023. |
| Tokyo Izakaya | Birmingham | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Popped in here before a whisky festival one day and was glad I got in early doors, because 20 mins later and there wasn’t a spare seat in the place. Lovely lovely lovely. | Once, 2023. |
| Wagamama | Gloucester | ⭐️⭐️⭐️ | As a Wagamama regular of many years I never used to rate their ramen dishes (in short: broths always a bit bland), but periodically they change up the menu (as you’d hope, for a chain that’s been around for decades) and last time I went in they had a shirodashi pork belly ramen that was just mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! Chicken ramen and Chilli chicken ramen still look avoidy though. Can not BELIEVE Tori Kara Age is off the menu nowadays! Travesty! | Frequent. |
| Ippudo | London, Central St Giles | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Tough gig for Ippudo – we went there for the evening on the dame day we’d been to Kanada Ya in the afternoon, and the only reason we went was cos we couldn’t get a table at Kanada Ya. Decent ramen, for sure – albeit a lot more formal-seeming setting. From memory the menus had pictures in, which instantly drops it down the rankings. | Once, 2023. |
| Ramen Ya | Bristol | ⭐️ | I just remember this being bland. If you’re gonna sell a dish based around broth, the broth’s got to have some fucking flavour. End of. | Once. Don’t care when. |
| Ramen Monster | Bristol | ⭐️ | Confounding, this – quite a big barn with lots of tables and it seems to be booked out for a lot of the time… but the one time I went I found it really uninspiring, with flabby noodles, a small portion, and a broth that tasted like it was Campbell’s Cream of Chicken soup. I seem to recall enjoying the Tori Kara Age. Suppose it’ll need a revisit. | Once, 2023. Future attempts unsuccessful without booking (!). |
| Hondo Sushi | Bath | ⭐️ | Total shit. Bland, pointless. Don’t go to Bath looking for ramen. I gather the sushi was nice, judging by the responses of the other patrons. | Once, never again. |
| Zen Ramen | Bristol | ⭐️ | Possibly a new all-time low. For one, who’s making Chicken Kara-age with breadcrumbs? Had me wishing they were chicken nuggets… and the ramen. Well. There was flavour in the broth, but it felt rushed and crammed. The menu talked about their secret char-shu recipe, and I’m confident that secret is “We buy leftover sliced of roast pork from the Toby Carvery up the road”. You might enjoy this if you’d never had ramen before. | Once. Might’ve been delivery. |
| Tonkotsu | Bristol | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Entirely decent. Tasty, good portions, and the brief chat we had with the manager made it feel less like a “chain” and more like part of a “group”. Definitely happy to return. | Once so far, 2024. |
| Miso | Newcastle | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Superb. This is quite high-end and personalised: the owner talked us through the menu & ingredients, and boy did we explore the options. A real diamond. | Once, March 2024. |
| Daikoku Ramen | Gloucester | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | After a long wait this place opened in the Food Dock in Gloucester Quays. Well worth the wait. Hakata and Chicken Shio are definite standouts, and the Tori Kara Age is excellent: albeit a bit large/expensive for a single portion. Very pleased that I can get to this easily when I’m in the office. | Frequent. |
| Monohon | London, Shoreditch | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Specialising in Abura Soba (a sauce-covered noodle) rather than ramen (although they do do ramen) – great flavours, great ingredients, nice vibe. | Once, Jan 2025. |
| Chilli Daddy | Bristol | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Definitely Dan Dan noodles, not ramen – but I Love Them So. Chicken Dan Dan level 3 spicy no egg. It’s a minced chicken dish on wheat noodles, loaded with veg, peanuts, and that mysterious liquor they drown it in. A Bristol classic! | Every Wednesday for about 5 years. |
| Chengdu Guoguoyan | Bristol | ⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Another Dan Dan noodle place, top of Park Street. Authentic Chinese and interesting to explore. I liked their noodles. | Once, 2024. |
| Yasaka Ramen | Sydney (yes, Australia) | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Popped by here for a takeaway when we went to Australia, but what a find to the hungry, rushed, jetlagged parent of a newborn. | Once, 2023. |
My classification system
Well, less of a system than an idea. I thought it best to go for a “cru” style grouping, where the ranking represents a group of a certain quality – rather than a straight out ranking. [i] No, there isn’t a two-star option. Because who the hell cares about something that mediocre?
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Quite simply, superb. These are the places I actively look forward to visiting – and if there isn’t an opportunity in the near future then I’m probably thinking about a way to craft one.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Excellent. Any ramen place in this group I’ll happily go to any day of the week, and recommend to friends.
⭐️⭐️⭐️ Decent. I’ll eat the ramen from here, and enjoy it.
⭐️ Not a chance. Tried it once. Jog on. Life’s too short.
Ramen & Me
Basically since I was about 10 or 11 I’ve been obsessed with those little wavy blocks of joy – the 2-minute noodle. You could say there was some brainwashing going on in the 80s.
In high school we got a bit more serious about flavour, with my chums Ryan and Tom and I working on our custom sauce recipes with which to pimp up our beige wavy blocks [ii] For some reason the eerie almost green iridescence of the Maggi chicken flavour sachet seemed to tail off in the 90s as a cultural obsession with E-numbers waned . Our concoctions inevitably consisted of combinations of:
- Tomato sauce
- HP Sauce
- BBQ Sauce
- Tabasco Sauce
- Worcestershire Sauce
- Chicken Salt
- Normal Salt
- Chilli Flakes
- Dried Oregano
- Dried Thyme
- Dried anything from the spice rack
- Anything from the spice rack [iii] At our house this had little or no bearing on the flavour, as most of the bottles had been there since the early days of the Whitlam Government.
- Peanut Butter
The technique was always the same – add the above to the saucepan or microwave jug with the boiling water and the noodles, cook for 2 mins, stir, and strain (thus throwing away most of the carefully selected ingredients). [iv] in later years Ryan would go on to start an actual business making sauces to make 2-minute noodles taste better: Electric Head
My move to the UK saw different flavours in the mainstream (although Maggi Chicken is globally ubiquitous), and when I moved to Bristol my access to a car meant better access to Chinese/Asian supermarkets – and the explosion of flavour possibilities therein.
And then in the early 2020s the UK (and the world) turned its attention to Ramen. Very much like the Burrito years of c. 2010 – but I welcome it, and embrace it, and it’s GOT to be better for me (if only nutritionally) than that cellophane-wrapped microwave nonsense.
Proper ramen is a thing of beauty. Chewy, handcrafted wheat noodles. Deeply flavoured 18-hour broths. Delightful accoutrements, and richly/carefully prepared proteins – always a welcome element but never the main act.
It’s what drew me to post Ramen Rankings, and now to iterate on that list with the above.
Now you’ve got me thinking about ramen (again).
Footnotes
| ↑i | No, there isn’t a two-star option. Because who the hell cares about something that mediocre? |
|---|---|
| ↑ii | For some reason the eerie almost green iridescence of the Maggi chicken flavour sachet seemed to tail off in the 90s as a cultural obsession with E-numbers waned |
| ↑iii | At our house this had little or no bearing on the flavour, as most of the bottles had been there since the early days of the Whitlam Government. |
| ↑iv | in later years Ryan would go on to start an actual business making sauces to make 2-minute noodles taste better: Electric Head |