Mitsukoshi Ramen Bar

So I came here with the Ramen club, I’m not sure if there is anything else I can say that Yee Gan O. & Andrew M. haven’t said.
To begin with I’m not a crazy big fan of ramen, but I do love udon but I’m pretty open minded when it comes to food. Right away my friends were already at the place sitting in the next door bar getting beverages when we were «seated». As a group of 87people, it was quite awkward seating WHY you ask? Because they seated us at the ramen bar area. WEIRD. Let me say, DO NOT SIT AT THE MOST RIGHT SEAT, they (waiters and waitresses) continuously walk by you and reach over you to grab food and give orders (not fun sitting there).
After that we were given our menus, we look over them. CONFUSING, a little because the most expensive ramen has the least amount of toppings in it. Oh well, I ordered the tonkatsu flavor soup. I can’t say that anything was super memorable but oh well.
The gyoza (dumplings) were decent, all handmade and made to order. You can see the people making them which is nice. The chicken kara-​age wasn’t that great.
Overall, the meal was nice but not super memorable.

Ramen Club round 7 took place in the (relatively) new Mitsukoshi Ramen Bar. Tucked away next to the main restaurant and the shochu bar, this place has a couple of tables that can seat up to 8 and a long bar that looks like it has enough place for about another 10 – 12 people depending on how friendly they want to get. And here lies my first gripe — when you know you have a group of 7 people who have already said they are fine to wait for a table, why do you put a random couple at an 8 seater table and then line up the group of 7 at the bar?
Anyways, the menu is fairly limited with two types of broth — «London» aka tonkotsu, and «Miso» which is a soy and seafood based stock. Both can be ordered standard or «special» with the special being a) called value on the menu, and b) having a marinated egg which the standard doesn’t have. You can also get extra chashu pork but be warned if you order that as a dish you sacrifice your egg despite the bowl costing around £3 more. The better bet would be to order the special and get the extra chashu as a side which is cheaper and gives you and egg. I didn’t read the menu that closely thinking, as pretty much every other ramen place in London does, that as your order the more expensive dishes, you are adding ingredients not substituting! And seriously, the egg is a key component — you can’t just get rid of it! So that’s gripe #2.
The staff seemed to be a little confused as to how we were ordering although that could be because it’s unusually to see a group of 7 lined up on the bar. They took the order of the first two people and then promptly disappeared. I’m not sure if they thought we were going to share 2 bowls of ramen between the group or what but highly unusual. After a lot of waving, we finally managed to place our order, but the end result is that Josy & Anton’s ramen arrived minutes after we ordered.
And now we reach something else that grinds my gears. I ordered the London Chashu Ramen with spicy sauce, but I was offered a bowl of Miso Ramen instead. When I raised this with the waitress, she brought over the order slip and pointed at a line of characters saying that the slip said Miso Ramen so that must have been what I ordered. Perhaps with my accent, London Chashu with spicy sauce sounds like Miso, but I’m not buying it (literally). After a few minutes of arguing, they finally agreed to replace the bowl with what I ordered but the damage was done.
Taste-​wise, the broth was quite rich and fatty (this being a good thing) with the pork having a distinct smoky flavour which was unusual and definitely pleasing. I would highlight that it’s worth pushing your pork down into the broth as the edges of my portion were still cold and had obviously not been warmed through by the steaming broth before being served. The spicy sauce was an excellent addition adding another dimension of heat (the broth was hot enough to require slurping to the joy of Vicky). My lack of egg was quite disappointing and I felt there was a distinct shortage of veggies in the bowl. The noodles were tasty and perfectly cooked and I thoroughly enjoyed slurping down the soup.
We had also ordered some gyoza and kara-​age to share between me, YGO, and Connie. The gyoza arrived just before our Ramen and was well made although it had absorbed a lot of scalding water which led to me burning my tongue. I will give them props for making the gyoza by hand to order (we watched them do it) but perhaps that’s not the most efficient method. Our kara-​age seemed to get lost and only arrived half way through our ramen and was a bit under seasoned at best. So that was a chicken fail.
To pay you need to head over to the till and tell them what you ordered. I’m not sure if they planned on relying on the honesty system or if they have some way of tracking. Unfortunately, this does create a lot of congestion at the entrance to the Ramen bar and may require a rethink. On the topic of poor planning, requiring wait staff to pass order tickets directly to the chefs across the bar is not very comfortable for the customers who constantly have to lean out of the way.
Overall, the taste of the ramen I eventually got was pretty bang on and probably my third favourite (Bone Daddies Tonkotsu and Cocoro Spicy being better). The gyoza was good although the kara-​age was pretty poor. The service in general was poor although I didn’t get the feeling it was intentionally so — perhaps just a bad night or they weren’t used to dealing with such a large group. The chefs were quite interactive with one posing for pictures and making an effort to show us what he was doing when we demonstrated an interest. So it may have been a better time had there just been a couple of us, but for the group experience I’m rating it a distinct 2 stars.

Josy A’s Ramen 7.0 UYE brought the London Unilocal Ramen group to Mitsukoshi Ramen Bar on Friday
London has been blessed by a flood of ramen places opening recently — big yay for that. It’s good to have Josy, who keeps track of these openings and keeps us updated
The group had decided to eat at either Shoryu or at Mitsukoshi and the plan was to eat at the one with the shorter queue as both restaurants are located on opposite sides of the same road. As quite a few of us had already tried Shoryu, it was perhaps fate that we ended up at Mitsukoshi
Mitsukoshi is located in the basement of a whole building of Japanese goods and services and has been around as a Japanese restaurant for awhile. However, the ramen bar is new
I arrived to find most of the group there already. We were seated in the bar while waiting for our table — the drinks here cost double that in the ramen bar. I paid £3.50 for a glass of sweet lemonade — the USP was a ball in the bottle cap. I was told that the fun part of this drink was to whack the ball into the bottle to get to your drink but the waiter had already done that when the drink was served. Boo!
When we were ushered into the compact ramen bar, we were a bit shocked to find that our group of 7 had been given 7 spaces next to each other at the counter. This made it impossible to chat to the group and they should have sat us at one of the tables instead
My main gripe was the very confusing menu. Basically, ramen-​wise, you choose either miso or tonkotsu soup base. There was a ‘value’ option, which cost more than the cheapest option. Andrew M and I were hungry and went with the most expensive option on the menu and were then surprised to find that this option didn’t come with egg or seaweed. Hmmm…
The tonkotsu soup tasted more of seafood than pork and though the menu did warn about some seafood in the soup, the balance had gone too far in my opinion. The noodles were nice and there was a generous amount of pork. I love fatty pork but some may find it too fatty. Sadly, I can’t tell you about the egg
Our end of the counter also shared an order of gyoza, which you can see the chefs making. These were nice and crispy on the outside. The fried chicken was a little bland
The staff were keen to please but it did seem a little Fawlty Towers in there. Down our end of the counter, we kept having to dodge as the chefs handed hot food over our heads to the waiting staff. There were at least 2 wrong orders for our group despite writing it down. We were told to pay our bill at the till, which was located at the samll entrance ramen bar, causing a huge jam of customers trying to pay, get in and get out
Hopefully, these are teething problems but they really need to fix that menu to make it much clearer. The food is worth another visit but for the moment, I can only give it 3 stars

Om nom nom. Oishikatta.
London is getting better and better when it comes to ramen. The people who brought us ittenbari are in charge of this ramen bar, so as you would expect, it’s goooood.
— I really, really enjoyed my ‘value’ miso ramen. The miso was the Nagoya-​style red-​ish colour… and, if you add spicy oil, it is rich, a teeny bit spicy and simply delicious.
— My noodles were perfect
— The soup was piping hot!
— The egg was good (but not quite as good as bone daddies)
— The ‘value’ ramen gives you the most ramen toppings, but you can add extras if you like
— The gyoza were delicious
— The staff were complete sweeties!
— Plus, their website says they will start serving tsukemen this spring! Yay!
*Less impressive bits*
— The décor in Mitsukoshi is a bit dated (I have thought that for yeeears… why don’t they re-​decorate!?) the ramen bar looks fine though.
— You can’t book a table BUT you can go and have a drink next door in the shochu bar while you wait. It was a little weird that we needed to pay for our drinks in the bar, we couldn’t just add them to the bill with the ramen. Meh!
— My ramen buddies that had the tonkotsu ‘london’ ramen were less impressed… so maybe it’s best to head to bone daddies for tonkotsu, and come here for spicy miso ramen.
— I think the menu translation could have been better (they probably mean ‘special’ rather than ‘value’) and there was a whole section about the soup that they didn’t bother to translate into English…
So, there are a few things that could be improved, but the flavour was so good, that they can still have 5 stars from me.

This place rocks!
If anyone knows about Mitsukoshi, they know it is a place
a) authentic Japanese food
b)where Japanese newcomers in town go for their first waitering job
And they just opened this place this week. After my very sad experience in Bone Daddies, and rather disappointing experience with Ittenbari, I need to find a place to satisfy my poor stomach who has been on diet on the last 3 weeks.
Met up with a professor (Specialist in N. Korea politics), we went there because I insist it.
Quiet, but nicely decorated, Staff speak better English than next door. And you have only two types of Ramen, London Ramen, which is pork and seafood soup base (Seafood is what Ittenbari serve) And Miso Ramen which is pork soup based.
Then you have 3 choice, normal portion, extra char-​siu portion or spicy version.
What I was sooo excited about is the option for butter! If you know Ramen, you know butter is usually offered in authentic Ramen places. It is the way how they eat in Hokkaido.
We ordered fried chicken and Barley tea (love). and it was quick and very hot when they serve everything. Chicken was very good, crispy skin and a scent of Lemon.
Very satisfied with the whole experience. And you know you walk into the right place, when single Japanese man all sat there with their newspaper, just like what you see in Japan