By: Jonathan Tran
Rating: 4/5
Ramen Nagi opened a new location in the Valley Fair shopping mall and continues to impress with its small but well-crafted menu. Offering a rather limited array of ramen flavors, what Ramen Nagi lacks in diversity, it more than makes up for in its mastery of the few choices on the menu. Nagi allows diners to customize their ramen with varying intensities of their selected flavor, salt, type of meat, vegetable, or type of noodle. Several toppings are also available for your ramen.
The largest downside to Ramen Nagi would not be the elevated prices but rather the tedious wait times to get into the restaurant. For context, Ramen Nagi opens at 5:30 PM, and I arrived at about 4:00 PM to get in line. I didn’t receive my ramen until 6:30 PM. This is probably due to the high demand for the restaurant, coupled with the tiny seating capacity inside, which can’t have been more than twenty-five people at a time. But the second I took a bite of my Green King basil style ramen, I knew it was worth every borderline delirious moment spent waiting in desperate hunger outside the small restaurant.
Rich, salty pork broth tinted with olive oil and basil flooded my mouth as I took a bite of the thin noodles from the large bowl. I split open my ramen egg and dropped my pork belly into the ramen as I savored the interesting flavor combination of East-meets-West Japanese tonkotsu pork broth with Italian pesto vibes provided by the olive oil and basil. The parmesan cheese mixed with the traditional chashu pork, kakuni, and tamago were also an odd but welcome culinary medley in my bowl. The size of the bowl was quite generous, but considering that I paid fifteen dollars for it, I can’t be too impressed.
I would confidently rate Ramen Nagi a 4.5 out of 5. The food itself is possibly some of the best ramen I’ve tasted (which isn’t an easy feat in the Bay Area), but the wait time is a definite detractor from the experience. I understand that it’s difficult to control lines, but the service, even once I got into the restaurant, was slower than I’d expect. Although the prices on each dish are, on average, five dollars higher than the competition, the portion sizes are large enough that I’ll give Nagi a pass. I would advise any interested diners to wait a few months until the hype dies down to try the food. I don’t anticipate the quality dipping in the coming months, and the wait times probably won’t be as insane.