Ai Ramen

We’ve heard many people talk about this place, and although mixed reviews we felt we had to try it after they won a reward. However, Japanese flavors are not there, so we will keep going to our favorite ramen place Kimama, which is a 5 out of 5!

Rating a ramen place in Sweden as someone who has spent a fair amount of time in Japan is a bit tricky as all the places here will most likely fail to impress. Ai Ramen hs received a lot of praise and while not great they still are not as good as I would have hoped.
Despite the location (far off on Söder in the premises the used to hold En Gul och En Ful) it was fairly full when I entered on a Sunday and they informed us that we had order right away as they were running out of noodles. For a noodle place that is of course a bad thing.
The menu is simple, a few different types of Ramen. The Tonkotso was already sold out so had the Shoyu instead (could have tried the Spicy Miso as well but not a fan of Yuzu). The broth looked a bit thin but actually had a lot of flavor and with addition of some chilly oil and sesame was good. The meat pieces were good but few and far between. The big disappointment was however the noodles, seriously they are not ok. You get better quality noodles in the ramen packages bought for a few SEK in the store. That really brought down the experience but still good ramen to be Sweden.
The rest of the menu is limited and also drinks selection is limited. There are a few decent beers but 90 SEK for a small beer is a bit steep. I will still visit again and try some more of the Ramen. Tip from the waitress was to avoid weekend evenings as the no bookings system and the huge surge in popularity meant they had waiting times around 2 hours during the weekend.

I tried their tonkotsu before and it was a huge disappointment, but heard that their ramen soup had been improved so I decided to give a try again. This time I ordered Shoyu (duck broth with kitakata-​style noodles). The broth was thin and not flavorful, and I was disappointed with that the noodles were not Kitakata style at all. (Kitakata noodles should be thick and curly!) I tasted my friend’s Spicy Miso, it was better than Shoyu but Yuzu-​kosho completely dominated the taste.
I could really see their effort to improve and wish I could give one more star, but sorry, I didn’t feel satisfied with the taste.

This place gets 4 stars for me on the basis of the veggie ramen alone. This really stood out as a wonderful umami-​filled broth thanks to the use of mushrooms in place of miso, often I leave ramen joints feeling sorely disappointed by the vegetarian ramen.
I also ordered the pickles, making guesses on a few there were cucumber, mushroom, and what I assume was plum and kimchi. The mushroom pickle was stand-​out, soo good, however the cucumber had a little too much sharp acidity.
Now to the negatives, my meat-​eating ramen friends were a little disappointed with the broth of their tonkotsu ramen. The soft-​shell fried crab dish was tasty but unrecognisable as crab.
Overall we had an enjoyable meal– I loved my veggie ramen and ended the meal with a nice bit of mochi ice cream. But Ai ramen will have to work on the broth to impress more discerning frequent ramen eaters, and elevate themselves above another hipster ramen joint.