Cantonese-Owned Ramen Shop Yamakoz Opens in Irvine Serving Duck Ramen | Eater LA
"Opened in December 2024 by chef Taiwei Ding and Sherry Yuan in Irvine, the shop’s signature ramen is a duck breast ramen made with Jidori chicken, duck, clam, oyster, and kombu; Ding sous-vides duck breast for an hour before searing it at high heat to seal in its juiciness, and the tender slices are then laid on top of the noodles and broth. The only other ramen features slices of American wagyu and slow-cooked tendon in a beef bone and oxtail broth, while casual comfort dishes like the Jidori chicken thigh curry, karaage, and wings round out a menu that rotates every few weeks as Ding experiments — he has recently added snacks such as teriyaki fish balls, curried beef rib fingers, and crispy panko-fried shrimp served with sweet and sour sauce and homemade mayo. Ding’s focus on only two types of ramen is inspired by the Tokyo ramen masters; he says he would rather perfect a simple, clean broth than make multiple varieties that are less precise in composition, explaining, “The Tokyo ramen chefs I admire make 72-hour broths that are very aromatic and flavorful, but afterward, your mouth feels clean — the broth is very clear.” While a student of the Japanese ramen style, Ding’s expression departs in the noodles: they stray from a traditional thick wheat ramen and verge near soba in width and flavor, made of both buckwheat and wheat flours — “It’s not a Japanese-style noodle per se, but this thinner buckwheat noodle pairs so well with the duck and doesn’t overwhelm it,” Yuan says. Ding often asks his Japanese flour supplier for new brands to experiment with; his current noodle recipe combines buckwheat flour, French wheat flour, three brands of Japanese wheat flour, whole duck egg, chicken egg, and seven types of sea salt. The open kitchen features a Japanese noodle machine in a picture window where guests can watch dough being fed through, and Ding keeps 200 cookbooks in the kitchen and office that he reads daily while “constantly watching ramen videos.” The cozy, home-forward environment — conceived by Yuan — includes tan leather banquettes by a glowing model fireplace, a large teddy bear perched in a small wooden child’s chair, Lisa Ono on a record player, a limewashed wall with a local artist’s watercolor of Les Deux Magots, vintage wood chairs sourced from Yuan’s house, and nearly every table ordering a towering silver teapot of Taiwanese oolong. Their backgrounds inform the concept: Yuan’s family once owned a 400-seat buffet franchise in Chicago and Ding’s family ran a food-supply business near Hong Kong for 37 years, and Ding previously worked at Tim Ho Wan; together they intentionally avoid a fixed menu — “We don’t want a fixed recipe tied to us,” Yuan says — to allow constant experimentation. That includes swapping sauce formulas (an unusually smooth curry sauce varying ratios of reduced apple and carrot puree and a frequently tweaked squid sauce): “I change the squid sauce all the time,” Ding says. “My cooking philosophy is to always try to do something different, and right now, I like it with soybean paste, konbu, organic American sugar, Shaoxing wine, and Japanese mayonnaise.” Because recipes change to highlight available ingredients, Yuan recommends not requesting substitutions: “Certain ingredients might clash or cover the authenticity of a dish,” Yuan says. “Based on what ingredients we can locate, we will change the recipes for soup, rice, and curries to really highlight the unique properties of the ingredients.” One constant is their commitment to comforting, return-worthy food: “This is the kind of food you’d eat as your last meal before you die — simple food with unique ingredients, like the ramen, the noodles, and rice my mom would cook for me,” Ding says." - Dakota Kim
