Chris-Yuki I.
Yelp
"One" is a new sushi and ramen restaurant. Seating maybe around 25, and it's the size of many similar smaller restaurants in the area. Today was the 2nd day since opening.
Food:
The ramen was substandard. I will breakdown the ramen into 4 main components--Noodle, Broth, Tare, Topping--for review.
The noodle was on the chewier, dense side. The noodles seemed disorganized--when I received the bowl of ramen, some ramen shops, before it's served, bring the noodle up, and "layover" the top layer of the ramen to make it visually appealing (and also easier to eat). This wasn't the case. It seemed tangled and thick.
The tonkotsu broth was lackluster. It was not a deep tonkotsu broth and tasted rather bland. If this was cooked on site, perhaps using more pork bones may help. The taste was actually similar to the tonkotsu packets from the grocery story that comes with the semi-dry noodles, with maybe a splash of milk. Also, the soup was rather warm/lukewarm.
The tare, which provides the real intensity of flavor, may or may not have been there. If there was, it was barely present. A shoyu-based tare to tonkotsu would have helped the soup a lot.
Toppings were adequate, except for the egg. The beansprouts, chasu (pork) were fine. Corn tasted like it was from a can. The egg was, in fact, soft boiled, however, the egg could have been marinated in a shoyu-mirin mixture. The egg tasted like a normal soft boiled egg (partly also due to the fact that the soup wasn't that strong). The soft boiled egg could have had some help from strong umami flavors.
I ordered a small salmon bowl that came with the ramen--similar to how you would order this extra bowl at Santouka. It was fine. I appreciated the micro greens that complemented the teriyaki sauce and salmon.
The tea they serve (today) was Osmanthus tea.
Service:
The first waitress didn't say hi--she just gave me the menu and put tea on my table with no eye contact. The main waiter was attentive and was pleasant to talk to. He explained that the donburis (looks great!) start on April 1st. I wish that they refilled my tea when it was empty. They refilled it at the very end when they started to take my plates/bowl from my table, but it was like a lukewarm water.
Inside:
The color scheme of black and red was very apparent. Chopsticks were placed vertically, which is a little weird.
Overall:
One competes with some popular ramen shops in this area. At their price of ~10.99 a ramen, without a robust taste, no innovations or creativity, it will be difficult for them to keep up in this area. However, their donburis (there was a picture with salmon, ikura, and sea urchin) are promising, as they could be a huge selling point for the business, assuming they have good quality rice.