Fortunately The Outcome Is Tasty Despite The Restaurant’s Creative License And Random Inauthenticity. E: Originally, the presence of Roast Beef Ramen on the menu had discouraged me from trying this new establishment in Baldwin’s restaurant row. Japanese food is attractive. Messing with it is not. A million wanna-be joints pretend and do not deliver. Ramen with beef is like trying to pull off pho with ramen noodles or something like that. Nonetheless, a chilly Friday night and the presence of actual ramen on the menu colluded and after snapping two photos outside it was time to enter, be seated and order.
The creativity or attempt at a modern twist or personal signatures are all over Ryus’ fare, but dinner was both adequately owing enough to real Japanese food and delicious to be satisfying.
Not being a pop drinker, the combo prices do not add up. They barely do even if I drank pop. Leaving those aside, I had the miso ramen and gyoza. Normally, my preference is to order a shoyu ramen – especially on a first visit – but reading the ingredients’ list (nice touch) for each ramen and scanning the accompanying photos of each indicated that the Miso Ramen is the least jumbled of the bowls. Vegetables are nourishing and welcome, but seeing an assortment where they don’t belong isn’t necessarily.
They advertise their pork, chicken and vegetable broth. Each ramen ordered comes with a choice of sauces like shoga (ginger), XO (which is Chinese, I believe), garlic and shallot (kogashi ninniku), spicy or the extra-cost truffle. Speaking of Chinese food items, one menu item is Congee With XO Sauce. Is Ryus trying to cater to its Chinese customer base? The truffle is probably a little bit of a gimmick. Not only is truffle not an East Asian norm, but also truffle oil is nothing more than olive oil nowadays. They advise you to add the sauce halfway into the bowl so you can taste the ramen and the ramen and sauce combination. Likely, it is a good idea to add the sauce right away. As well, having waited to comply with the instructions my sauce had becomes inseparable with its saucer. Either way, the sauce is strong and potent.
My ramen’s noodle was different from the noodle of the shio, shoyu or spicy ramens they were serving. My noodle was thicker and eggier. On my first visit, it already seemed as if Ryus abstains from standardization and favours mixing and matching. The taste was rich, but not overwhelming. Looking at the list of ingredients (white, red, etc.) one can see how things can go awry, but the miso broth had balance. There were two pieces of meat on top. As tender as the chicken was it didn’t belong. There was a tasty charsu pork as well. The broth, therefore, is made from chicken, pork and vegetables and the contents are too. The waitress noted that they add daizu (or more mature edamame) to their broth.
The quantity was not lacking. It was a filled bowl full of noodles and sprouts. The noodle was delicious and chewy. The large amount of sprouts and chopped vegetables was not as impressive as they were taking up space belonging to noodles. Tanmen is also available on the menu.
The Shio/shoyu Ramen on the menu contains arugula. Why? What? How? Japan and arugula are like peacekeeping and the United States Of America. What is next? Ramen with Brussels Sprouts? I asked the Osaka-native waitress and she admitted that at Ryus was the first time she had come face-to-face with the vegetable. On a subsequent visit, I had their Shoyu Ramen and ordered it without Arugula.
So here is the theme thus far: delicious, variation on the norm, uniquely assembled, but still reasonably close to the original fare to justify the title and allure of a real Japanese eatery.
This takes me to the aforementioned gyoza. It was so good. This was partly because it reminds one of my favourite dumplings, Korean mandu! Its wrapping was thicker than the average gyoza’s and was crispier as well. Think yakimandu or oyaki perhaps. They have added cream caramel to the menu. The owner has leveraged the talent of Rieko in the kitchen, who was trained as a pastry chef in Japan, and offers cream caramel, which he calls Rieko's Smooth Pudding. He knows that the proper Canadian name for it is 'cream caramel,' but hints at Japanese nomenclature by calling it 'pudding' as Japanese do. The 'pudding' looks like chawanmushi, but be assured there isn't shrimp inside!
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A: The "noodle bar" does not have an actual noodle bar. It has bar-style seating. The dining room is akin to what a modern Japanese neighbourhood noodle restaurant would look like. There isn’t a view to the chefs or ramens however. The cooking happens in the kitchen in the back. That is too bad. It is not traditional. Having said that, I could see some of the kitchen from my stool and it looked clean and organized. There are a couple of male and a couple of female chefs in there. Whether women can drum up a soulful ramen is debatable. See Tampopo for reference and compare to Ramen Girl or the chefs at any quality ramen-ya here or in Japan.
The room is bright. The waitress offered window or counter seating. The seats at the window are too small. There is also a semi-communal option in the centre of the restaurant. Get a table and the seating is not cramped, which is a break from other ramenya. A Japanese family and friends, a Japanese couple and others comprised the restaurant’s patrons for the night. They were not completely booked. This isn’t news of course, but contrast Ryu’s customer count with the ever-present line-up at Kinton and the difference is marked. I walked past Kinton going in and out and people were outside waiting. One would be liable to think it unsavvy to open a ramen shop between the more established Konnichiwa and Kinton, but there is wisdom to being where a concentration of businesses similar to yours are. Some kind of a banal Michael Jackson-sampled hip hop was polluting the air. The washroom access was through a sliding wooden door. The washrooms are new obviously and clean.
For a little while there was smoke emanating from the kitchen – probably enough to rattle the fire alarm – before they deployed a large fan, which apparently did the job. The friendly staff was quick to apologize.
A large kanji character on the bright white wall depicts the word ‘Ryu.’
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T: “Are you ready” the waitress asked a minute after being seated. No not really, but service there is prompt. Everything arrives on time, the bill is instantaneous and they do not forget anything.
There isn’t a line-up at the door so one can find a seat quickly. Parking here is more available at night than during the day however.
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S: Yuki didn’t have the biggest smile of the waitstaff, but that is only because the other waitress’ was huge. The staff is Japanese front and back and work well. The other waitress has been in Canada for three years and has changed over from a holiday to an immigration visa, but Yuki (whose name does not mean ‘snow’ even if she loves snow and likes to draw a snowman) was relaying how shocked she was with the amount of snow blowing in her face the day after she arrived here this winter. Why mention this? Before deciding on whether to order gyoza or not I wondered whether they make theirs in-house or buy it from “outside.” Her response? “You want to take it out!?? ” For the record it is made in the kitchen.
Ryu-san (per the staff) is the title for Ryuichiro "Roy" Takahashi. He is from Chiba, which is just north and east of Tokyo, but has spent three years in Vancouver. More specifically, he hails from Kashiwa. Yuki didn’t know where the owner had worked in Vancouver, but since she was on her way to Whistler and Banff was happy to hear about Japadog. Hope she makes it to J-Town for some food, but in the meantime her service is exemplary. For the record Ryu-san had toiled in Vancouver's Robson Street at Jinya. Quality checks and attentive service was the norm. They instruct you to add the sauce half-way as said and offer a loyalty card with twelve stamps. It all almost makes up for the Angus Beef soup, broth, ramen thingie.
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