Friday, January 30, 2015

Best Ramen in New York: Ivan Ramen, New York, NY

Ramen's moment is now. Mu Ramen, Ramen Lab and Ivan Ramen are being written up everywhere. After our slurp shop adventure last fall, I was eager to visit the mothership - Ivan Ramen.

You'll find Ivan Ramen on the Lower East Side in a sliver of a spot on Clinton Street. Part the curtains and enter the den of ramen. 

Lines are long but luckily they now take reservations via OpenTable; they quickly seated our party of 5 in the window. We were not in the mood for alcohol (read: hungover) although our neighbors' beer and cocktails looked both interesting and delicious.  On the non-alcohol side try a Yuzu lemonade and you won't be disappointed. 

We started with chicken cutlet katsu for the table.  Thinly pounded fried chicken with lemon, cabbage shiso and spicy sauce woke us right up.  Yum, I could have eaten this for days.

Ramen was next and, WOW, was it spicy.  I had the "dry ramen", a Dan Dan noodle with thick whole wheat noodles, sesame oil and, spicy, did I mention, spicy, sautéed pork.  A ramen without the broth.  My kind of ramen.

We also had the more traditional shio and shoyu ramen, both had rye noodles, pork and chicken broth.  The difference was in the condiments - sea salt for shio, soy sauce for shoyu.  Either way you have it, it is awesome.

In fact everything at Ivan Ramen is awesome.  This may be the best ramen in New York. We are already planning our next visit.  Who's joining us? 


Ivan Ramen
25 Clinton Street
New York, NY
646.678.3859
ivanramen.com



2 comments:

Paulina said...

Hi there! I really enjoyed Ivan Ramen when I was in New York a few months ago, glad to see they are now taking reservations. I was hoping I could reach you via email to ask a couple of questions, could you let me know where to email you?

BergersandMore said...

You can reach me at bergersandmore@gmail.com.
Thx! KLB