Yokohama Ramen — Restaurant in Northampton

While I loathe to disparage a small restaurant in a small town, and nonetheless ultimately found my meal palatable, I feel obliged to write this review for any family members of students or faculty from a major us city (or even Japan) who are frequent ramen eaters. In short: this ain't it. While the restaurant serves it's purpose as a spot for students and their family to have a nice meal, it does not really do much for anyone even passingly familiar with ramen cookery.

The first sign of trouble was when my gyoza were brought out 5 minutes before the ramen. They are a side dish not an appetizer. While this isn't inherently bad it is an indication that dedication to traditions of ramen service are "not on the mission statement" for this establishment.

I ordered the tonkotsu and upon my first glance at it I stopped the waiter and asked if they got my order right. He assured me this was in fact the "tonkotsu". Now I'm no great lexicologist, I'll leave that for the egg heads up the street at smith, but calling the bowl they served me "tonkotsu" is probably wrong. Though to act in the spirit of the mission of the 5 colleges I could be generous and call it "emergent local vernacular of the cuisine". Either way it was not a primarily pork bone based cloudy broth. Nor was it a strict chintan. Some kind of medium transparency brown affair. By the taste id guess at least part chicken based with a soy sauce tare.

The noodles were thin, which isnt inherently bad. honestly I was quite surprised to find a hakata style noodle at a place like this. Unfortunately i think a more accurate taxonomic assessment of the noodle would be "boxed angel hair", which is certainly a unique twist on the classic.

The toppings were perfunctory. The chashu was fine but not interesting at all. The spinach was not great, there were two sad little menma strips lost at the bottom of the bowl. it had carrot shreds in it for some reason.

Anyway I write all this because I needed something to do while enjoying my coffee on this beautiful morning in the pioneer valley. If you are wondering how on earth someone could possibly be so pretentious about something like this my answer to you is simple and straightforward: because I think it's funny. If you are wondering if I actually talk like this in person, my answer is also simple: sometimes.

Oh, the...

This place is such a ripoff. Their food is very mediocre. First off they do not even make their own broth! It comes prepackaged! For 12 dollars a [missing basic ingredients] very basic, ramen bowl you would think that the "chefs" would be bothered to at least learn how to make their own broth.

It cost an extra $2 just to add half a hard boiled egg, $2 for spinach!?! By the time my friend was done adding in veggies that are a basic staple to any ramen bowl, it was $18 dollars. [Yokohama has even deleted the extra charges from their website, but it is still on their house menu, very sneaky]. When my best friend got his bowl, he noticed that the egg was PRE FROZEN!! It was cold and a part of it was gummy. He did not like his broth either, he shook his head and was like, Eh yea I'm not feeling this. But we where both so hungry and tired from waiting 34 mins for our food that we ate it anyways.

My bowl had a strange after taste too, and only around five pieces of corn in it. It tasted so strange that I asked if the bowl was fresh and if there was something funny in the broth. That is when I found out that everything is pre-packaged/premade. Even their $3 coconut water, turns out to be just the normal 50 cent cans that you get at any Asian grocery store. Even the Takoyaki that my best friend ordered had a off texture to it. He said that it tasted like it had been cooked in a microwave or something.

Even the darn green tea that we ordered tasted "cheap". Not to also add that we got it luke warm, with one of the cheapest bagged green tea packets that you can buy. The restaurant it's self is nice, clean and cozy; but the food has just a cheap feel to it, like it is fast food level, but they are trying to pass it as a "higher end" fine dinning experience without having the proper kitchen staff, chefs or high end ingredients to back up their price tag.

Needless to say we will never be going back their. Their prices are insane, the food is meh, and some of their items are either pre forzen, pre-packaged, or pre-made. I have a feeling that this establishment will...

A friend and I are trying out new restaurants each month, I had seen a film that involved ramen cookery, and Yokohama ramen had opened fairly recently, so we gave it a try. Spoiler! We plan to go back. Our server was friendly and helpful, very willing to answer questions about unfamiliar menu items. We ordered two appetizers to share, yaki-gyoza, fried dumplings similar to pot-stickers, and I forget the other, but we enjoyed both. We each chose a ramen main dish, mine with a misu broth, my friend's with a chicken broth. We both had regular (wheat) noodles, but rice noodles are also available if you need to avoid gluten. Each dish has several vegetables, plus half a boiled egg and a slice of chashu (braised pork belly or chicken) for protein. Suffice to say that these ramen dishes were nothing like the packaged stuff we know from the grocery store. Filling and satisfying! We finished the meal with mochi ice cream flavored with green tea, black sesame, mango and coconut. (We could each have up to two flavors, which like the appetizers, we shared, so that we both got to taste as many items as we could. As I said earlier, we do plan to return. Our server was happy to split our check between two credit cards, but we left our tip in cash, to be sure there was no delay in...