Ramen Gojiro

We love our ramen noodles. That’s a fact! We rarely go to downtown Vancouver but on a Friday night, we found ourselves with an hour to kill before a friend’s birthday party. I had been to Ramen Gojiro two years before and I didn’t have strong feelings about it either way. I was down to give it another shot.

There was already a line of about 10 people at 6:30pm and we took the chance that it would move quickly. We got in about 15 minutes later. There’s a large shared table and the hostess asked if we would mind sitting there as there weren’t any free tables. No problem for us!

I will note that the service was slow for a ramen place. We ordered our food first but the couple next to us got their food first instead. The guy also noted that they gave him the wrong noodle. This reminded me of the first time I came with two other people. They both received their ramen but I had to remind the staff of my order. I finally got my order when everyone else was done eating. They did not offer me any sort of compensation for their mistake. I’m not sure if this was just bad luck on my part of if there service is sloppy.

My order was the regular size chashu ramen. I found the noodle portion size to be very generous. I ate about half my noodles and bean sprouts and gave the rest to Howie to finish. They also gave me two huge pieces of chashu which was the perfect amount of savory. The meat was very tender and I could pull it apart with my chopsticks.

You can choose between a rich or light broth. My bowl was the light broth which I originally feared would be watery and too light. To my delight, it was actually still very rich. Howie had ordered the rich broth and said it was too heavy for his liking. He preferred my broth much more than his own.

Howie opted for the kaarage because who can say no to deep fried chicken? They serve the pieces of chicken in the soup and so half of the chicken was soggy by the time he dug in. However, the top part that didn’t touch the soup was still very crispy. They use 5 spice in the breading and it made the chicken very tasty. Next time, he will ask for the chicken to be placed on the side.

Here is Howie doing a noddle pull. As you can see, the ramen noodles are very thick. They had a perfect bounce when you bit down on them. The noodles soaked up the soup broth very nicely. We were very pleased with the freshness of the noodles.

We do wish that they would include green onion or bamboo shoots free of charge in the noodles but all these things are considered “extra”. You need to pay an extra fee for them.

Overall, this was an easy meal to enjoy. We spent about 45 minutes here and left with plenty of time to get to our party even with the lineup outside and the slow service. If you’re in downtown, give this place a try!