Kevin K.
Yelp
Eh, how do you say "this is a bit mid" but in AI hallucinated Japanese and a Taiwanese accent?
かなり平凡です Canary Heybondes.
I average one Japan trip each year so I inevitably run across various forms of ramen. The flipside of this is that I have quite a bit of experience when it came to ramen, may it be abura (mazesoba), tsukemen, and other various regional styles, so I should be thrilled when Yasubee from Tokyo came over to the states...right? Honestly, I've never heard of them (unlike Mita Seimenjo which is a national Tsukemen chan with 55 restaurants) -
Yasubee.us site claims their lineage from a ramen shop founded in 1950 at the tourist trappy Omoide Yochoko 思い出横丁 (Nostalgia alley) in Northwest Shinjuku, and it supposedly grew to 80 "beloved" stores across Japan. A red LED went off in my head. Yasubee is a popular name for salaryman restaurants in Japan due to the heroics of Horibe Yasubee 堀部安兵衛, a ronin warrior involved in the Ako incident (look that one up)...except on their logo it was rendered in Hirgana as やすべえ instead of kanji as 安兵衛, and one of the links on their site points to yasubee.com in Japan. That's for Tsukemenya Yasubee つけ麺屋 やすべえ, a small chain with 8 stores across Tokyo (not 80 across the country). They are a shop specializing in Tsukemen and there's no mention of their history there.
You can say that there are lots of eateries named Yasubee in Japan and some are ramen shops. Was there one at Omoide yochoko dating back to 1950? Yes, but the name is rendered in Kanji, and considering that Japan is still under US occupation until 1955 with noodle flour not being easy to come by back then, in a location that was still rebuilding from rubble, the place (an izakaya) served yakitori and motsunabe (offal stew) with booze. They are still around today (shinjuku-yasubee.com) and they don't serve ramen (that's considered a Chinese import adapted for local tastes so traditional izakayas won't have it). Tsukemen wasn't even a thing until 1965 when it was made public (it was a staff meal of noodle scraps and leftover soup before), but it didn't get popular until the late 90s. So is there a Tsukemen Yasubee in Shinjuku? Yes, it opened in the mid-2000s in the Southwest when the Tsukemen style took off, but closed down in March 2025 due to that location being redeveloped. The other 8 restaurants in that chain are all between 5 and 15 years old.
So okay, the lineage claim is bupkis, and they are a ramen franchisee owned by Kung Fu tea (founded in early 2000s Flushing by Taiwanese immigrants). How was the food? Well, the apps are basically a variation of what was served at Taiwanese tea joints with snack counters (like Quickly or Vivi Tea), what with the dumplings and fried chicken. Their gyozas were nothing special and their karaage is certainly very "popcorn chicken" (鹽酥雞) like. What about their noodles? It's very much phoning it in. How do you feel about a small-ish portion of thick Chinese stir-fry noodles (油麵) served chilled with a salty but watery soup on the side, with bits of pork belly and Katsuobushi (dried tuna flakes) on top? If you want the soup version they'll dilute it and throw the noodles within so it's...edible (but lacks personality).
At 62 bucks for 2 people with 2 apps, a lychee highball (really just a can of Kungfu tea with some "well" sake) and the usual 19%, it's not expensive by midtown west standards. The service is decent (Mellie is hilarious) and quick, and the spot is chic and comfy. But damn the food is *meh*. The apt metaphor for Yasubee is the AI hallucinated "painting" in their restroom. Sure, it contained some generic Japanese words but you sure as hell can't nail down where the original subject matter was, and anyone who has been to Japan will pick up on how it's almost, but not quite like Japan itself.
I guess you can say that about the food here itself.
