Asking for the best ramen in NYC produces a list of the same four famous rooms and no way to choose between them, which is a shame because they are not making the same thing. A heavy Hakata-style tonkotsu, a clear Tokyo shio, a plate of cold noodles with a bowl of concentrated dipping broth and a brothless bowl of noodles tossed in tare are four separate dishes that happen to share a section on the menu. The twelve below are sorted by what they actually make, with addresses, so you can pick the category first and the shop second.
Twelve shops is only useful if one of them is near you and open when you are hungry, which is the part a list cannot do. Tell Karpo where you are and how long you are willing to travel, and it can pick the bowl that fits the walk instead of the one that sounds best on paper.
The heavy tonkotsu tier
Tonchin, at 13 West 36th Street, is the most reliable pork-bone bowl in Manhattan — clean rather than sludgy, noodles made in house, open straight through from 11.30am to 10pm so it works for a late lunch as well as a dinner. Ippudo's Westside room at 321 West 51st Street runs the Akamaru Modern, a tonkotsu with a slug of miso and garlic oil that is still the reference bowl for a lot of New Yorkers, and its 11.30am to 10.30pm hours make it one of the few serious kitchens near the theaters that will feed you before a curtain. Ichiran, at 152 West 49th Street in Manhattan and 374 Johnson Avenue in Bushwick, is the Hakata specialist that seats you in a partitioned booth and takes your order on a form: broth richness, noodle firmness, garlic, spice, all specified in writing. It is the least social ramen in the city and the best possible version if you are eating alone at nine at night.
The clean-broth tier, which most people should be ordering more of
Ivan Ramen at 25 Clinton Street built its reputation on a Tokyo shio — a clear, salt-based broth with rye noodles that reads as delicate next to a tonkotsu and holds up far better in warm weather. Momofuku Noodle Bar at 171 First Avenue, a Michelin Bib Gourmand, runs its smoked pork bowl in the same register: seasoned rather than saturated. Check the hours on that one, because it runs dinner from five on weekdays and only adds lunch from Friday through Sunday. And Wanpaku, at 621 Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, is a Cambodian-Japanese izakaya where the shoyu bowl is the sleeper — worth going early for the happy hour, which puts drafts at six dollars and karaage at seven.
The dipping tier: tsukemen, done two ways
Tsukemen is thick cold noodles served beside a small bowl of broth reduced to roughly triple strength, and it is the format that converts people who think ramen is too salty or too hot to eat in August. Yasubee at 253 West 26th Street is the American debut of a Japanese shop with more than eighty years behind it, and tsukemen is its whole identity rather than a menu footnote. Okiboru, at 117 Orchard Street, is the handmade-noodle version — the noodles are the reason to go, and the correct order is the plain one before you start adding things to it. Ask for the broth thinned at the end of either meal; that is what the pitcher on the counter is for.
The brothless tier, and the late one
Kajiken at 1001 Sixth Avenue serves abura soba — noodles with tare and oil at the bottom of the bowl and no soup at all, mixed hard at the table before you eat. It is from Nagoya, there are more than a hundred branches worldwide, and it costs less than a comparable soup bowl because there is no broth to simmer for eighteen hours. For the other end of the day, KyuRamen at 210 East 14th Street runs its kitchen to roughly one in the morning, which in a category where most shops shut by ten or eleven makes it the default answer for anyone leaving a show or a shift.
Two in Brooklyn and one for lunch
Tonchin's Williamsburg room at 109 North 3rd Street is not a copy of the Manhattan shop — it runs a wider izakaya menu and a genuinely serious natural wine list, which makes it the only shop on this list you would book for a proper dinner rather than a bowl. In the Financial District, Kuu Ramen at 20 John Street exists for a specific purpose: a lunch special around thirteen dollars, in and out in twenty-five minutes, which is the cheapest properly-made bowl in Lower Manhattan and the reason there is a queue at one o'clock and nobody there at four.
Two shops we took off this list
A Hell's Kitchen ramen shop that still appears on most New York roundups shows as closed on current listings, so it is not here — if you have it saved, check before you walk to Ninth Avenue for it. And the much-praised shop that keeps turning up in New York searches under a similar name is in Chicago, not the East Village; that one has cost a lot of people an evening. This is the recurring problem with ramen lists in this city: the category turns over faster than the articles about it do, and a shop that closed in the spring will still be somebody's top recommendation in the autumn.
How to use the twelve
Pick by format and weather before you pick by name. Hot day, order shio or tsukemen. Cold night, tonkotsu. Eating alone, take the booth in Times Square or the counter in the Financial District. Eating with someone who wants a full dinner, cross to Williamsburg. Late, go to Union Square. And whichever you choose, order the bowl as it is listed the first time — every shop on this page has built its house version deliberately, and the toppings menu is where an eighteen-dollar dinner quietly becomes a thirty-dollar one.
Tags: #bestrameninnyc #nycramen #ramen #tsukemen #aburasoba #tonkotsu #lowereastside #greenpoint #midtown #williamsburg #eastvillage #nycfood #noodles
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Ask Karpo first
Ramen shops in New York keep short hours, move addresses and close without updating anything, which is why half the lists you find are wrong. Ask Karpo which of these is open right now near you and it can check before you walk twenty blocks.
