Absolutely shocked this place has no yelp review yet. I'll start it off by saying it's an incredible bowl of ramen, the place has thoughtful owners who own several other businesses throughout Kentish Town and greater London, including Mamasons Ice Cream and Bintang.
The ramen itself is ingenious. I had the oxtail kare-kare ramen which contains their prize winning broth. As someone who loves eating both Filipino food (my spouse is Filipina) and eating Ramen, I can say this: It will feel precisely at home to people who only know the one thing. It would pass for ramen in Japan, it would pass for kare-kare in the Philippines. That's NOT something i've found, for example in New York, with the fusiony types of ramen.
So to be clear, this was 100% satisfactory. However I feel they could go even one step further: normally kare-kare is served with a concentrated shrimp paste, bagoong, on the side, which gives it a hit of salt, umami and seafood flavor to contrast the fat on the oxtail; it was not seen here. Actually, this type of side dressing is very common in ramen; for example you could get a miso ramen which has a wad of pure miso spread against the side of the bowl for you to periodically scrape into the soup for you to get some extra pop. So I think bagoong is perfect for this and would not alienate either side. I humbly suggest this as an improvement to the recipe :)
Part of the ownership is Bangladeshi. I asked whether there would be dishes with more pronounced Bangladeshi influence later because I think that would be extra cool. The person (who i _think_ is part of the managing or owning crew, also happens to be South Asian of some sort) said that those ideas are coming down the pipe and they have a cold noodle salad with lots of Bangladeshi influences that will soon be on the menu. Also, he volunteered that they were considering making their own noodles in house and letting people watch the process. That would be really cool.
Other crazy cool things:
* They make their own ra-yu (chili oil.) It's not much effort to be honest, but it's a good touch. Even great ramen restaurants will use a bottled ra-yu from time to time.
* When you get the bill, it is presented in a DVD case. We got some Eastern European crime syndicate movie with Viggo Mortensen. Unfortunately, you can't take the DVDs home with you :)
* They have fun movie posters which they tweak for themselves. One of them is to celebrate their award winning kare-kare ramen broth and the other was to announce the availability of reservations for Mother's Day (in both Tagalog, Japanese and English.)
In conclusion, I think this place is a superlative ramen joint because it really stays true to what ramen should be while being creative in the right quantities to stretch your boundaries. I'm really happy with it, and eager for them to keep succeeding and perhaps to open a branch in Tokyo one day :) read more