Tanpopo Ramen and Sake Bar — Restaurant in City of Albany

I found Tanpopo Ramen and Sake Bar while searching Yelp for places to eat the last time I was in Albany. I live in Vermont and drive over to Albany for a “mini vacation” on my days off from running my own restaurant. So it took me a few weeks to make it to and I drove directly from Vermont to Tanpopo on a Monday night after I was done working. I knew when I drove up that I was going to LOVE IT inside this restaurant.

Tanpopo is located in Albany’s Warehouse District, which is quite full of restaurants (strong representation from the “pub” sector). The Warehouse District is fabulous. I LOVE authentic, old urban. Not fancy, not pretentious. Life and history happened here and people are still here. That is precisely what we want in our cities. Wide street with plenty of easy, on street, free parking. I arrived at 6:30pm.

Tanpopo is located inside a diner car that is on the National Registry of Historic places. Think 1920s diner, NOT 1950s diner…). The building is wood not the shiny metal of the ‘50s era, with the domed roof. Inside there are booths along the walls a counter/bar with comfortable raised height seats and a separate raised counter/bar for communal type seating, or a larger party of people.

The vibe is FANTASTIC. It’s a small space with a small team (just one or two people waiting tables). Staff is great! Friendly, upbeat, GOOD at what they’re doing. I don’t drink beer, but they’ve got a good selection of beer on tap and an entire cocktail and sake menu. I had sake.

Menu is not huge, but you presumably came for ramen and anyone can get ramen here. I don’t eat beef, pork or poultry (apparently all their pork menu items are FIRE, according to my waitress Alex). So I got vegetable ramen and added fish cake and egg to it. If you want vegan ramen you just have to ask for the vegetable ramen vegan and they will sub out for rice noodles.

My ramen was DELICIOUS. FANTASTIC flavor. I had eaten a bunch of things before the ramen even came and I was getting, you know, uncomfortably full. But. I. Kept. Eating. My. Ramen. Freaking delicious broth and ingredients and excellent noodles!

I also ate:

Edamame (forgot to take a pic) and they were perfect;

Seared Peppered Tuna Salad: Delicious salad full of pieces of sliced tuna over nice, crunchy Romaine and delicious combination of sauces for dressing;

Vegetable Gyoza: made in house, VERY good, with more of a variety of vegetables in them than I’ve in any other vegetable gyoza.

And…

Steamed Buns WITH FRIED OYSTERS!! I was so psyched to be able to get steamed buns with seafood. They were awesome! Buns were so lovely and pillowy. Fried oysters were huge and fresh and crunchy.

Upside: Everything in this diner car is authentic. Including the fantastic, original, TINY little bathrooms with even TINIER little sinks.

Downside: This place is not handicap accessible in any way, shape or form. Even if you could get inside you could not use those original little bathrooms. I’d go as far to say you need to be below a certain size to use those bathrooms…

Upside: you can order online easily and I would bet the waitstaff would are more than willing to bring your order out to your car if you could not enter.

Also! The early evening summer sun streaming in the windows behind me was everything!

I...

I'm giving two stars because the service was very good but that's where the good experience ends. The flavors are all wrong, we had the pork buns, the chicken ramen and spicy ramen. The buns themselves were cold which wouldn't be a big deal if the chasu (braised pork) would have been good. The pork is supposed be marinated in soy sauce, mirin, garlic, ginger, green onion and a small amount of toasted sesame oil to increase the umami. Then, slowly braised so it becomes so tender that it almost melts in your mouth but what I got tasted as if some warm spice was added (e.g. cinnamon, nutmeg or old spice) and it was a bit rubbery, as if it was boiled instead of braised. The chicken ramen was basically chicken noodle soup, it had some greens (i want to say spinach but I could be wrong), raw or lightly boiled red onions (this was a first in 15 years of eating ramen), scallions and phakchi (cilantro) which most Japanese folks dislike for its strong taste/aroma. The spicy ramen was okay the Tonkatsu broth came through but it didn't taste rich enough, the toppings were good with the exception of the chasu that was rubbery. But the worse offender of them all was the ajitama (the egg). The egg is supposed to be soft boiled then pickled on a sweet soy sauce mixture, this gives it a beautiful sweet & salty umber exterior with a sunny gooey center packed with umami. What I got was a hard boiled egg that some how tasted old and, yet, not pickled enough. I haven't tried other ramen places in the area yet but, if this is rated so highly, I feel like the closes good ramen spot would NYC (Ichiran Ramen, Ivan Ramen, or Ippodo) or NJ...

I've been here 3 times. It's not far from the highway; a convenient stop on my way back from home to where I live in Binghamton.

I have almost always ordered the same thing from the straightforward menu: pork buns and spicy tonkotsu ramen with an egg added. This is not a very cheap meal at around $20, but it's almost as much as I could ever eat. This is among the best ramen I've had. It's like ramen should be: fatty and flavorful. I wish we had something like it in Binghamton. The pork buns and dumplings (which I accidentally ordered on my most recent visit) are excellent too.

I've always been seated right away and waited less than 15 minutes for my food, though I have come at off times (often Sunday afternoon). This is despite it being a small place. Some customers might be unimpressed by the age and first-glance cleanliness and be off-put by the facility e.g. the tiny bathrooms, but I find all of this part of the charm of the place, and the place really is kept clean - it's just old.

The service during all of my visits has been attentive and pleasant. I'm usually in a hurry to get back on the road and not in the mood to talk. The one time I ordered dumplings instead of buns by accident, the server was understanding and offered to have the buns made anyway, though I said no thanks.

Their parking lot has been under construction for a while, but I always find street parking nearby. I'm not a local, but the surrounding neighborhood doesn't seem great. That said, I've never had any issues.

I plan to continue my tradition of stopping into Tanpopo on my way back from New England. What a...