Yasaka Ramen — Restaurant in Sydney

Yasaka Ramen - "New Pork City"

Yasaka Ramen is a unique restaurant that is by no means mainstream in it's taste. Can a restaurant that differs with wildly from the norm hold up against the slew of Ramen places in Sydney?

Upon entrance you are guided by the expectedly nice (this is a Japanese restaurant after all) staff to a small bar, where you use a QR code to order, which as always is incredibly annoying, though with Ramen it does have some benefits, as choosing customisable ingredients is much easier now. Your section of the bar has adequate materials for the dining experience, with chopsticks, tissues and three shakers of salt, chilli powder and garlic powder. The place is very clean and the ambience is quite nice and reminiscent of Ramen stalls in Japan.

The shop offers no unique/store-mixed drinks so I cannot comment on that, however there are canned soft drinks on the menu.

Now the most important factor of the meal, the Ramen itself. The extra three pieces of karaage were full and rich, though the crumbling was not that crunchy, though contract with the broth may have softened it. Bamboo shoots were crunchy and had good flavour, though it's obvious store-bought produce and not freshly prepared. The kikaruge (the thinly sliced wood ear mushrooms) were tasty though I found that they did not give ample amounts of it. Two soft-boiled eggs flank the bowl, and the warm white of the egg pairs great with the cold yolk.

The tonkotsu slices take centre stage in helping provide the body of the meal, four in number and meaty, rich and satisfying. The meat is tender and full of that pork-y goodness that accompany the broth and noodles deliciously. Really great meat in this and it's nice to see a Ramen place not skive on the meat, though four slices is a massive amount of meat, and might be too much for most people.

Noodles are where Yasaka Ramen varies from the pack, with them being cooked in an 'al dente.' They are also quite thick and are chewy with good springiness, but the main reason why they taste so different is the flavour of the noodles, which is a very weird but nonetheless appetising aspect of the meal. They taste very very strongly of pork bone and collagen with an almost konjak-like texture. Overall the noodles are where they fall short a bit and I wish they would reign in the pork flavour a bit, considering both the broth and the meat add to the overpowering nature of the meal.

The broth also falls the same way the noodles, tasting incredibly strongly of pork bone and trotters and yet lacking flavour. It is not particularly rich nor creamy which is nice to see, but the pork flavour negates whatever balance the broth would have. All in all the broth is mediocre at best and might put off many people who dislike the incredibly strong taste.

Service/Ambience: B- Drinks: N/A Food: C+

Final grade: C+ | Slightly above average

Comments: An interesting restaurant with great Ramen toppings and alright service eventually bottlenecked by strange flavours and choices while making the...

I wasn’t going to leave a review if not for the incident that occurred today. Normally I would just let it go and either not go back to that particular restaurant again for a very long time or at all. This place used to be good. Very disappointed with my experience last night.

My friend and I ordered two spare ribs ramen (DO NOT RECOMMEND) and a takeaway Grilled Chashu Ramen (Tonkotsu Shoyu) for my partner. The spare ribs ramen was not nice. I mean the soup and noodles were okay (fatty but okay). The spare ribs were just dry and had chunks of fat stuck onto it. Btw the spare ribs are given to you at size of a ruler. It was just a dry and rough chunk of meat.

There were also issues with the takeaway order which I will not elaborate.

Please note, if you can’t finish or don’t want to finish the spare ribs, do NOT ask for takeaway because: They don’t seem to understand what “could I please have it packed in a take away box” means. They will tell you they are going to charge you a takeaway box fee - which is fine. That’s not the issue here. Then they put the box in front of you with a bag. You ask them if they can take it into the kitchen and chop it up so that “it actually fits in the box” to be taken away. They ignore you. When you ask them again, they bring you a “butter knife” and say - you need to cut it yourself. After trying for 5 minutes to try and cut through bone and the loaf of meat, it clearly wasn’t working out. I take it downstairs to the kitchen staff and asked if they could “please cut it up so it would fit in a takeaway box”. The kitchen staff reluctantly complied with a face that looked like I was bothering them with completing some other very important task. They were not happy to help.

My partner had the spare ribs (which was completely intact except for a small piece I had broken off to try) and Grilled Chashu Ramen that evening (took maybe less than hour or so to get home) and he’s been having diarrhoea all of today. My friend that had the same ramen as me seemed to be fine, I can only infer that the reason for my partner’s very upset stomach was due to the piece of spare ribs not being handled correctly by the kitchen staff that reluctantly chopped it up. Or alternately, the Grilled Chashu Ramen.

Now, I have a very upset partner and have been strongly requested to write this review. Terrible service, terrible food (or what...

Great ramen.

Value 4. Taste 5. Quality 4.5. Unfortunately cash only and no outdoor seating.

Ordered the giant Mashi mashi king with shoyu tonkatsu base, which honestly could feed 3 people. Definitely worth value wise, it came with a free extra serving of noodles as I said we were sharing.

The kakuni was on point, soft flavourful and sweet which balanced well once soaked in the broth. Pork ribs were pleasantly crisp on the outside, however it was a bit stiff towards the end of the meal and the flavour was one toned. The chasu unfortunately was a let down. Slices were thick and nearly chewy, even when soaked in broth, flavour was underwhelming and I could not taste the grilled part.

Eggs were absolutely perfect, the best I've had so far, savoury and very soft. Broth was okay... by itself but too salty when paired with all the meats, and there wasn't enough of it either, taste of tonkotsu was too faint and the texture was too thick for the dish. Noodles were soft, kind of like tenkomris, nothing like ippudos.

Make sure to dig down when things get too salty as the cabbage is quite naturally sweet and mellows out the salt.

Recommendations: review the recipe for the chasu and add eftpos, I know commbank is across the road but there's no need to inconvenience your customers....