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Rai Rai Ken

April 22, 2015 by Feisty Foodie 9 Comments

This is from a date in late January… but it went well, and as a result I have nothing that I would share publicly.

When you date people who work late hours, you become familiar with the late night eating scene. Luckily, late night ramen is a very real thing in our lovely city, and DFB and I worked out a list of places to hit. The first of them: Rai Rai Ken, which was actually one of the early entrants to the ramen game over 12 years ago. A former friend of mine used to LOVE this place, so I expected it to be at least satisfactory (though I find her to have ridiculously bad taste in just about everything, so I suppose I should have taken that to heart).

20150125_002215.jpgWe started off with an order of pork buns because, pork buns. These were awkwardly tough to eat – the pork wasn’t quite so tender that one could bite through it easily, and we both struggled. There was a heavy squiggle of mayo on the inside, which made the overwhelming taste of just fat and slippery goo on the inside. I didn’t care much for it, and DFB agreed that it was passable.

20150125_002238.jpg

DFB apparently loves kimchi and though I pointed out we were at a Japanese place and kimchi is distinctly Korean, he wanted it. When it came, we were both disappointed – it was solidly mediocre to below average. We left it mostly untouched.

20150125_002304.jpg

An order of gyoza, which was crisp on the outside but oddly bland and mushy on the inside. Dipping it in the sauce helped marginally, but it was honestly not worth the calories or stomach space, as our main event hadn’t arrived yet.

20150125_003503.jpg

I’d ordered thick noodles in shio broth – shio is one of my favorite broth styles, ‘salt-based’ – I love salt. It isn’t meant to be salty, per se, but just incredibly savory. The thick noodles were wonderfully thick – almost udon-thickness, though a bit soft/overcooked – but the broth wasn’t wonderful. At all. In fact, it was borderline disgusting (a word I detest using to describe food) – it was oily, so oily it might’ve been just a bowl of oil served to me with stuff in it! I ate my egg – which was perfection personified – but the broth congealed each time I paused eating. Literally, the top would ‘sheet’ over and I’d have to ‘break’ it with my spoon or chopsticks to continue eating, so eventually I just gave up and left roughly half the bowl uneaten. I was so offended by this ramen, when I walked out, I said pretty loudly, “I am never coming here again!!” and DFB agreed readily. His bowl had been the same, and we made the same faces at each other and drew the same conclusion – this was way too oily and not worthy as a late night stop, even though they are open pretty late. Not a single item we’d had was even mediocre/good in a pinch, but ranged from bad to really bad.

Boo.

Rai Rai Ken on Urbanspoon

Filed Under: Around NYC, Asia, By Name, Cheap Eats, Cuisine, East Village, Japanese, Manhattan, Restaurants Tagged With: dumplings, gyoza, noodles, pork buns, Ramen

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Comments

  1. ellen says

    April 22, 2015 at 1:48 pm

    Good to know! Will stick to my mainstay of totto ippudo and mitsuwa

    Reply
    • Feisty Foodie says

      June 8, 2015 at 1:34 pm

      Kambi is pretty decent too, it’s over on 14th Street.

      Reply
  2. S says

    April 23, 2015 at 3:37 pm

    Encouraging. A date that you did not want to share an awful story about. The awful food report almost made up for the lack of “another” bad date story.

    Reply
    • Feisty Foodie says

      June 8, 2015 at 1:34 pm

      Ha.

      Reply
  3. Ttrockwood says

    April 23, 2015 at 11:19 pm

    That sucks. I had a mediocre meal there years ago and haven’t been back since, sounds like that’s a good thing.
    Late night nearby i think kenka can be fun and i love their bbq rice balls and random appetizers

    Reply
    • Feisty Foodie says

      June 8, 2015 at 1:35 pm

      I love Kenka! It’s my ‘favorite place that I never posted about’ – I was there constantly for a while and every time I’d think “Ok I’m going to take pictures and post about this place finally” my camera would die. Literally. So I decided to stop trying, haha.

      Reply
  4. WANg says

    April 24, 2015 at 6:15 pm

    Well..if I have to be honest, there are better places to grab a late night bowl of noodles in the East village. Setagaya has the quality, Fukurou on MacDougal has the ambience, and the ramen at Yakitori Taisho is definitely cheaper. Sorry if you got that place instead…RaiRai Ken is one of those places whose success I could never comprehend. You guys did at least do the 6 block walk to Venieros or the Momofuku Milk bar for dessert…right?

    P.S: Tabata next to the Port authority bus terminal is a better late night date ramen spot…and if you are in Queens, much better ones.

    Reply
    • Feisty Foodie says

      June 8, 2015 at 1:43 pm

      You should always be honest. I don’t think Setagaya is that great actually…
      No dessert – this was very late on a Saturday, so those places were closed.
      Love Tabata though service lately has been garbage, not sure I agree that it’s a better date spot — and I am definitely never in that area for a date! 🙂 Where in Queens do you recommend though?

      Reply
      • WANg says

        July 27, 2015 at 5:06 pm

        Depends on where in Queens you are, and how late you are willing to stay out until –

        Astoria
        Well, I actually know of 2 ramen places (Hinomaru and Tamashii), but only one of them is accessible to the Queens Blvd subway lines, which is Tamashii. Decent noodles, broth can use more savoriness, but the best thing about it really is the location.

        It’s only 2 blocks from the Broadway N station, and then if you walk about 8 blocks north from 30th and Broadway you actually reach Steinway stop on the M/R line (late night it’s the E). It’s a densely populated neighborhood with a healthy amount of traffic, so it’s safe there.

        If you pop up the map several notable restaurants pop up in the area –
        a) King of Sharma – if you like street meat, it’s one of the more notable places) right next to the C-Town parking lot) – open until 3a
        b) Pao De Quiejo – really decent Brazilian desserts like Brigadieros and their passion fruit flans – open until Midnight
        c) Los Portales – really good Mexican food, if you like Tortilleria Mixtamal, these guys are even better – They serve their horchatas in big glasses with Mexican cinnamon ground up on top – open until 2a, closed Sundays
        d) The Strand (you probably know this one)
        e) Cafe Omona – it’s a Greek cafe with sidewalk seating that’s open until 3a. Good for a post-meal chat and etc – open until 3a.

        Jackson Heights
        Hit Playground (72nd and Roosevelt) for okay/decent Thai, or Zabb Elee for amazing Thai (their spicy Catfish soup is great) – both places open until 3a weekdays.
        The izakaya downstairs from Playground is open until 4a.
        There’s also a few Korean places that are not too bad. Hae Woon Dae and Chung Ki Wa are both 24 hour establishments – good for late-night Soodoobu Jigae.
        If it’s at least 3 dates and you know for sure that your date are okay with hole-in-the-wall joints, hit some Tibetan joints in the area. Himalayan Yak is until midnight, Lali Guras is open until 11:30p, Merit Kebabs is until 3a. The Chicken Thenthuk there is especially notable since it’s tasty and damned cheap. The cafeteria-like decor is a major problem though.

        Reply

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