Ai Ramen Sofia — Restaurant in Stockholm

Good meals, cosy restaurant with good tap & bottled beers and sake that has been a neighbourhood favorite at Södermalm.

Ai is best known for their ramen. The Sthlm Shoyu ramen noodles have a springy texture was accompanied by a thick savory cut of pork belly. The meat has the right hint charsiu flavour done Japanese style which is wetter and saltier as compared to the Chinese version.

If you are not a noodle fan, then the Donburi are good alternatives. This rice dish comes with poached egg, kimchi, mayonnaise, pickles and fried toufu or spicy Gochujang fried chicken. The sauce is not hot at all. It's more tangy, salty sweet.

For those who are less hungry, just sides of fried chicken or pork nuggets with beer is a great treat too.

Ai offers local beers on the tap and imported bottled beers from Japan. The star amongst these is the Japanese Nest Beer Red Rice Ale- a red sparkly ale blended lightly with sake. The bouquet is fresh, fruity with the aroma of jasmine rice. It went fabulously well with the sticky rich, slightly sweet hot sauce fried chicken.

Seating at the restaurant is on high chairs at a table or counter. The kitchen closes between 1600-1700 CET but the bar is open. At dinner, the restaurant fills up fast. Good service from staff that has worked here since...

To celebrate my birthday, my friends took me here for some late summer ramen, however our experience was rather underwhelming.

It took 30 min before we got our food, which in itself is fine seing as it was a pretty busy night, but my soup was rather cold and the noodles were raw. I didn't want to make a fuss, but felt I needed to make a complaint to see if I could at least get some hot broth! We were sitting outside and it was starting to get cold.

When talking to the waitress she said that the reason for the noodles being raw was that they were going to cook in the plate, but I asked how that was going to be possible when the broth was cold. I asked if I could get a new plate of ramen as it was too cold to eat. She responded she had to talk to the kitchen. She returned to let me know that the noodles were supposed to be raw and that this was natural. AGAIN, I asked how this would be possible with a plate of cold broth. She said I could have a new plate of ramen but that it was going to take another 30 min. due to the wait. I felt this was unreasonable so I went inside and talked to the chef right away. I did get a new soup but it was just as cold as the first one.

Sorry guys, but this was my second visit and the first one wasn't that...

Huge disappointment. Service was under all critic. When first entering the waiter had done a mistake by charging a different table a dish they didn't order and refused to pay the customer back. Then I asked to order but they said I should take a seat. After 10 minutes I still had not gotten the menu. After I said I want to order to one of the staff they asked me if I wanted the menu, but I just ordered tonkotsu ramen. I've been living and travelling much in Japan and this is nothing close to authentic Japanese ramen. So if that's what you're after don't come here. The watery soup had no depth and no flavour except the burnt garlic that took over everything. The hakata noodles were not tasting well and were not thick enough for being hakata and was boiled too long. The noodles didn't separate either. The eggs were alright. The chashu was too thick, should've been cut in thinner pieces, but quite tasty. Their prices are way overpriced, place is trying to be very trendy, but kind of fails in my opinion, there's no originality. They played quite loud hip hop music as well, which would just have been better if they turned off. Overall this place wouldn't survive a week in Tokyo, the soup was a disaster and this is not authentic...