The story of ramen is very old, but our story is very young. Opening our first restaurant at Melbourne’s heritage GPO building in October 2007, we were convinced that Melbourne needed a ramen specialist shop. And not just any ramen, but tonkotsu ramen, the pork-bone ramen from Southern Japan that requires intensive and prolonged care to make.
At Ramen Ya, our tonkotsu stock is made by boiling the stock over a high flame for over 2 days while regularly crushing the soup bones until they dissolve into a creamy consistency bursting with flavour and natural goodness.
Our charshu is similarly made with love and care, using only the best belly pork and stewed for hours in our special japanese soy sauce until it is incredibly tender. It is then carefully sliced, with any slices not fulfilling the ideal mixture of fat and meat being discarded.
Typical of any ramen shop, we also offer the usual accompaniments to ramen such as gyoza (dumplings) and chahan (fried rice).
Bowing to customer demand, we now offer selected bento boxes for those not so noodle-inclined.
In 2011, we opened our second restaurant at 108 Bourke Street, Melbourne.
Ramen Ya has been featured as one of Melbourne’s best cheap eats in various print publications and also on Channel 7’s Coxy’s Big Break programme.