KyuKyu Ramen 99 - SM Center Las Piñas — Restaurant in 2nd District

I tried their ramen before back in 2021 when I first moved in Las Pinas. I bought the cheesy ramen out of curiosity. And it was decent, but despite what people say here, it's nothing to be writing home about. And that's because for the price, it's just underwhelming.

I then retried going back here just to try their super premium umami ramen for 260 php. And I will say, it's "good" but there's nothing super nor premium about it. It tastes what you'd expect from a good tasting ramen that has the basics down, because of that I don't really find it anything special because this taste is supposed to be what's normal, plus the chashu was incredibly thin like bacon. Every other ramen they had is subpar, and that's because my benchmark for ramen for 200 pesos and below has always been Kuroda Ramen.

Kuroda ramen has a far better broth, noodles and chashu. Plus they pretty much compete with the price of KyuKyu. In terms of value for taste, they win. If a branch were to open up here in SM Center LP, I assure you they would put this place out of business.

I'd forgive them if this was priced lower, but it's not. If you're just after a decent tasting ramen and is near, sure it's fine. But if you can travel and has a place that's near a KyuKyu branch and Kuroda, choose the latter.

Below is a comparison. In the left, I bought the gyoza and the premium ramen from KyuKyu for 335. The right is a set from Kuroda with a Chicken Gyudon for 370, this is more plentiful despite just 1 chashu. However that's just the set, if we just compare ramens, you can buy a Chashumen for 250php from Kuroda which adds 3 additional chashu and makes the premium ramen from KyuKyu pretty...

Food: 4/5 Service: 4/5 Atmosphere: 4/5 Cleanliness: 2/5

My pregnant wife wanted a quick ramen fix on a rainy Saturday night. Given that most of the popular ramen houses nearby are full, we tried looking for an alternative. Google recommended KyuKyu as it was a quick drive and parking will not be an issue. To my surprise, for their price, the taste was decent. The broth and the food were served warm. For someone who regularly eats ramen in any type of restaurant there is, the serving for me was too small but for its price, it is just fine. Gyoza was a bit of a disappointment but, again, decent. The ambience was fine and gave that Japanese ramen bar vibes but its cleanliness is not maintained. People come and go after eating but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t clean the place properly. I took some photos for reference.

Overall, this is a good place to introduce someone to budget ramen. A good “try-it-once” type of restaurant but for me, not something I’d crave...

Their raman is a fairly decent. To get into details, they offer a 99 pesos ramem, which is the "kyu kyu ramen" I haven't tried as I opt for the higher price the "Umami ramen". The problem is they have the same size of bowl for the 99 and 200+ ramen which is small. The meat is thinly sliced like a bacon. For the taste I can rank this as 3rd or 2nd place, 1st place is Ramen Kuroda, and the Champion is Ramen Nagi. :)

I haven't taken a picture, ubos agad kasi due to the...