Sunday, 05 August 2012

• The Ramen Quest At Rai Rai Ken

  

  My boyfriend and I are Ramen addicts. We love ramen and we are determined to try some of the best ramen shops in New York City as well as the different types of ramen available. We recently decided to visit Rai Rai Ken after reading some reviews on Yelp.com. However, after trying it out ourselves our thoughts changed.

  

  Rai Rai Ken moved two doors down from their former location, so I never got to see how the former location looked like. However, the look to Rai Rai Ken is simplistic, yet very chic. The restaurant is not spacious at all and most definitely not meant for a group dinner. There's very limited seating.

  Unfortunately through my experience at Rai Rai Ken the service was slow and the food was mediocre. I was quite disappointed.

  

  We started off with appetizers and opted for the fried pork and vegetable gyoza. I love the crunchy texture of the bottom layer of the gyozas. However, what I didn't like was that the size of it was small and the filling inside the dumplings wasn't enough.

  

  My boyfriend ordered the curry ramen. Gosh darn it, I don't know about you, but it seemed the proportion of the soup to the noodles is greater. There seems to be too much soup and not enough noodles. The soup was full of curryness, but tasted a bit watered down. The ramen noodles had a spongy and bouncy texture to it.

  

  As for me, I ordered the Shio ramen bathed in the house special seafood based soup and topped with bamboo shoot, boiled egg, roast pork, spinach, fish cake, dry seaweed, and scallions. The texture of the noodles was very fine. It wasn't oversalted nor was it overwhelming. It's worth your bucks.

  

  I read in one of my friend's restaurant reviews of Rai Rai Ken that the almond tofu dessert comes with fruit cocktails and I was excited to try it. I've tried almond tofu before and it's amazing and total comfort food. I was quite disappointed when we got our desserts because there was no fruit cocktails on it at all. I didn't raise a point or a question about this since it wasn't worth it.

  Although Rai Rai Ken appeared like a great restaurant, I can't say I was entirely happy with their food and service because I wasn't. It looks like this restaurant will not be on my favorite list nor my boyfriend's. It's time to move onto another ramen restaurant to try.

  What ramen restaurants have you tried?

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