This week’s dinner was at a small high end ramen restaurant that seats 10-12 people. This was the Spring Extended menu, so dishes change seasonally and the extended menu differs from the weeknight counter menu, but is largely the same as the Friday Sake Pairing Extended menu (which features a couple different dishes and exclusive sake). They only have seating 4 or 5 nights a week and only one seating per night.

This restaurant was started as a pop up and the couple who owns and runs the place opened up the restaurant last summer. First course was their Financier, which was a nicely crisped on the edges with a smoked shoyu creme fraiche and Tsar Nicolai Golden Reserve caviar. The sweetness and the salty of the caviar made for a great start to the meal.

Second course was their ramen-ized chawanmushi with hokkaido scallop, prawn. chicken, and a house made XO sauce. Not your typical chawanmushi, but very tasty and I loved their XO sauce. Then came a a spiced hamachi dish – the hamachi was very fresh tasting and Andrea loved the spiciness.

After that came the first noodle dish which they call “CarbonAbura” Soba since it uses 3 eggs and hokkaido uni, ikura (salmon roe), and custom made soba noodles, and konbu dashi. I thought this was fantastic.

After that came some pickled dishes of kholrabi and cucumber followed by the rame course. The ramen dish featured custom tapioca noodles, clam dashi and chicken broth, 3 types of clams, corn, chashu, and konbu butter. I also loved this dish with it’s lighter flavors…Andrea would have preferred something a bit meatier, rich, and spicier.

Two dessert courses – the Annin Kakigoro which consisted of an almond tofu, kiwi, and yuzu shaved ice and the Dorayaki, which were shoyu honey mirin pancakes sandwiching chantilly, salted brown butter crumble and strawberry which I thought was original and very tasty (salty sweet and some texture from the crumble).

We also went with a sake pairing for the meal. I’d have to say that each of the pairings were delicious and thoughtfully paired and one of the most consistently delicious sake pairings we’ve ever had.

All in all this was a very enjoyable experience. The only criticism we’d have would be that the pacing was a little slow (there are only the 2 owners and one other person working) so each course took a bit of time, but I was generally fine with it (2.5 hours for the meal). The owners were very engaged and personable, but it seemed like it was certainly something that was very labor intensive for them. I hope they stick with it and I’d expect that in December, they’d receive a Michelin star. We’d happily dine here again.