In this solo dining adventure, Gary checks in on an old ramen standby, Ramen Setagaya in the East Village.
Ramen Setagaya.
Ramen is kinda a big deal here in New York City. From the East Village to Midtown, there’s no shortage of ramen to be found – some good, some great, some mediocre. For the most part, they’re all stand-alone locations, not chains. Yes, Ippudo is a part of a chain but for now, the ridiculously busy East Village location is their only one in New York City. Hide-Chan and Totto, while from the same owner, do things differently enough that they’re sibling restaurants in the truest sense.
But there was a time when we had a ramen chain and it wasn’t really all that long ago. It was only a few years ago when Ramen Setagaya had four locations in the city – three below 14th Street in Manhattan and one in Flushing. For a place that was then feted as having the best ramen, you’d think expansion to four locations would be a no-brainer of a sure bet. As soon as they had expanded to four locations, they went through rapid changes in ownership such that only one outpost remains. Heck, it’s not even the original one of First Avenue that’s stuck around for the long haul but rather one of their later locations, the one on Saint Mark’s.
I’d barely visited since the contraction so it left me wondering – was it a rapid decline in quality that did them in or just business as usual in the city’s restaurant industry?
Syo-Yu Ramen.
After visiting and having the Syo-Yu Ramen, I can say that it’s not the quality . The ramen’s still as good as I remember it – nice chewiness in the noodles and a clean, soy sauce-based broth. The choice of adding onions is a littler different from the way most places do it these days but I always appreciate the sharp bite they add to the ramen.
Final Thoughts
No matter what happened behind the scenes at Ramen Setagaya – I’m guessing franchiser/franchisee squabbles here – I can safely say that the ramen is still as strong as ever. I never considered it to be the best in the city but it’s definitely in the upper half of the fray though it’s hard to say where they sit in the rankings because, really, ramen to me is either gonna be pretty amazing, pretty good, or just average. It’s squarely in the “pretty good” distinction, something I wouldn’t go out of my way to get but will be more than happy to stop in at when I need a hot bowl of ramen to warm my body.
Ramen Setagaya. 34 Saint Marks Place, New York, NY 10003. [Show/Hide Map]
