yaokui: Yebisu Ramen

Address: 126 North 6th Street, Brooklyn NY

Phone: 718-782-1444

http://www.ramenyebisu.com

The city's ramen craze has finally caught on in our neighboorhood, Williamsburg. The weekend late night only ramen special at 1or8, the Kinfolk Studio pop-up "mazemen" place at Yuji Ramen and not to mention the often rotating ramen stalls at the Smorgasburg. Yebisu ramen had finally arrived and it had already become the extension of our dining room. As the maitre'd, Masa-san, said to me the other day to me, "This is your home". In the past few months, Gan and I have been getting our Saturday brunch ramen fix at the Smorgasburg Yebisu Ramen stall. In fact, we were such loyal customers that the trio: Akira, Masa, and Reiko had started calling us their favorite customers (though I think they're more amused with Gan's obsession on eating ramen, cold dry version or even piping hot ramen broth in the middle of the hot NY summer).

Yebisu Ramen had finally opened their brick and mortar restaurant this week a block away from Bedford Ave on North 6th St, a couple of blocks down from our apartment. Gan and I have been back twice, and have tried almost all the ramen offered on their menu! It's a no frills menu, with hardly any appetizer (one option: chicken salad) and no deserts. The main focus is on the ramen and they do have a few options: Miso Ramen, Shio Ramen, Shoyu Ramen, Yebisu Ramen (seafood broth) or Abura Soba that are just as good as the ones at Totto Ramen or Ippudo in Manhattan. It's hard to pick our favorite here, but we both agreed that the rich porky miso ramen stood out the most. The noodles are springy and the miso+pork+seafood broth are made to order and heated up in the wok with onions and bean sprouts. It was heavenly. The yebisu ramen (seafood ramen) on the other hand is lighter and comes with generous servings of crab legs, shrimp and mussels. Not that cheap at $17 a bowl, but I'd say it's the ultimate ramen for seafood lovers. Our you-can-only-get-it-here yaokui recommendation is to add on the really delicious soft boiled egg and char siu to go with your ramen.

So what's the secret to yebisu ramen being so amazing? Its the team! Ramen chef Akira hailed from Yakitori Totto where he used to work at as the head chef. Yebisu Ramen is actually a collaboration between the Totto group and the Chai Thai restaurant next door. I'm already plotting to convince Yebisu to serve yakitori as appetizers one day, to fully utilize chef Akira's talent! Masa-san mentioned chef Akira also makes killer desert... I think there's room in the menu to include that as well!

So to all you ramen lovers who have asked, is yebisu ramen good? The yaokuis think it is. And as our fellow yaokui friend YH accurately puts it, "Totto equivalent with no wait must be sweet"... and we couldn't have sum it up better!!