Ajisen Noodle Restaurant Visited 2/21/2011 3.25 Forks

Ajisen Noodle Restaurant 14 Mott St., (between Chatham Sq & Worth St), New York, NY 10013

 Ramen places in NYC are becoming a dime a dozen.  Most of them are in the East Village but Aarti and I decided to try one out in Chinatown (there is another location in Queens and several hundred around the world).  This place is a slightly off the beaten path in Chinatown and is one of those places that has plastic food in a showcase outside.  To be clear here this place is not run by Japanese people but Chinese instead. Not sure if that really makes a difference in the food or not, but usually I tend to prefer ethnic restaurants run by people of the same ethnicity although I have definitely been to good places run by outsiders.

The menu is has a mish-mosh of ramen, rice bowls, appetizers and sushi.  I typically steer away from sushi at places like this so I stuck with the miso ramen ($9) and an order of gyoza ($5) and Aarti got the veggie curry ramen ($8) and seaweed salad ($5).  The prices are slightly higher than what I would expect from a Chinatown place where bowls of noodles can be as low as $4-7 a bowl.  The decor of the restaurant is slightly nicer than your typical grungy Chinatown place with nice wooden wall paneling and tables similar to a Japanese place, so that was a nice touch.  The food comes out relatively quickly and the service was attentive but not pushy. 

When I typically think of ramen I think of salt, lots of it...either in the college packaged form or the upscale nice place like Rai Rai Ken or Ippudo.  So when I tried this ramen I was shocked that it was actually a bit bland.  It was a bit low on the flavor level and I had to actually add salt to it. I mean what?!  My ramen came with half a hard boiled egg and several pieces of tender pork.  The meat and noodles were plentiful and cooked well, it just needed more flavor in the broth.  The gyzoa and seaweed salad were fine and frankly pretty standard.  Aarti's ramen had corn in it which you typically don't see in ramen and she liked the curry broth although she also said it needed more salt and flavoring.  I never ever thought that I would ever say that I needed more salt in a ramen dish, but maybe that's a good thing? Total bill was $28 for two without tip, which is a bit more than what I think a lunch meal in Chinatown should be but the good thing was that there wasn't a two hour wait like at Ippudo.