Leah S.
Yelp
After traveling to Japan and living in Hawaii, we have eaten literally hundreds of bowls of ramen. We are most fond of a tonkatsu style ramen with a cloudy broth and toothsome noodles. After moving from the East coast back to California, we knew that there were some great ramen spots in West County, but we heard about miso ramen and decided to give them a try.
We arrived just as they were opening, and grabbed a spot on the deck in the front to limit our potential exposure. Our waitress Vivian came by and gave us menus and told us that they were only serving ramen, bowls, and hot appetizers. I ordered some Nigori sake ($15 for 300ml) to start and we took a look at the menu. I decided to order the house Tokyo ramen ($16) with a cloudy broth and tofu instead of pork, and hubby went for the butter miso ramen ($16 + $2 for egg) . I also ordered the vegetarian fried potstickers ($8) and a side of their spicy soy vinegar.
As we waited for our order, I remarked at the beautiful redwoods just outside the restaurant, which were a nice touch to the atmosphere. that said, as we ate, there were multiple people who drove by with very loud music, smoking, and people who were not wearing masks that made me think I might have chosen a less than optimal location to eat.
The first thing that arrived was the sake, which is really hard to mess up so it was decent. The gyoza came next, extremely hot and perfectly crisp, filled with edamame and other yumminess and was probably the best thing we ate the entire meal. The sauce that came with the pot stickers was like a yum yum sauce which is basically a slightly spicy mayo and was pretty good.
My ramen did not have the broth that I requested and came with the standard broth. I still gave it a good try but it was really not anything special. I'm used to having the lightly poached eggs in ramen be marinated in some type of soy but these were just plain which was a little bit of a disappointment. I was also curious about the fact that the ramen was topped with raw purple onions and spinach??? I've never had these toppings on any ramen anywhere.
Hubby's ramen was no better, also topped with raw onions ( not green onions which are traditional), as well as raw spinach and carrots??? He is a huge ramen fan and I think I saw him eat maybe a third if that of his ramen before he put it aside and said no more. The sauce that I requested on the side was supposed to be a spicy soy vinegar but it was really just spicy soy sauce which was also a disappointment.
Overall, I'm not sure if we hit them on a bad day, or if they're still trying to pop back up after being closed for covid, but we expected a lot more from a place that's supposed to be known for their ramen. If this meal represented the quality of their usual food, we definitely would not return here given how good Ramen Gaijin is in Sebastopol and we would probably just go there in the future.