Jun-Men Ramen Bar

249 Ninth Avenue

(between 25th and 26th Streets)

Winter is coming. So it’s ramen time!!

Jun-Men just recently opened and they are still working out the kinks. However, that doesn’t seem to deter customers. Wait times can be as long as 45 minutes to an hour. Knowing that, I made sure to go when it opened for dinner: 5 p.m. on a Saturday night.

Like many noodle bars, the space is small—I think it can only seat about 40 to 50. As a matter of fact, it’s easy to miss. I’ve walked past it in my travels dozens of times and I always mistaken it for a Japanese hair salon. But unlike traditional noodle bars, the décor is modern and minimalistic.

The menu is also minimalistic.

Along with the dishware.

 

For starters, we ordered the fried sweet potatoes with maple bourbon butter and umami mayo. The bourbon butter on the fries made it good enough to eat without the umami mayo condiment. It seems to be a fave, as I noticed that every other table also ordered the fries.

 

We also tried the pork bun appetizer—pork belly, pickled cucumber, and hoisin sauce. It came with a serving of two, so perfect for sharing. Must note, that I’ve had better. Perhaps I should have ordered the BBQ pork bun.
 

 

As far as the ramen, my sister ordered the kimchi ramen with roasted pork shoulder, egg, kimchi, and scallion, which came in a large bowl. She slurped up the noodles and had so much soup left that she decided to take up the waitress’s suggestion of an extra order of noodles ($2).

 

I ordered the restaurant’s signature dish. The uni mushroom mazemen. It’s uni, roasted pancetta, porcini butter, truffle oil, fried shallot, and scallion. As it’s a dry ramen, it doesn’t come with soup.

 

The taste is interesting and I am glad that I tried it, but I think a little bit of uni goes a long way, so I didn’t need a whole bowl of it.

For drinks, surprisingly Jun-Men does not offer wine or tea?!? Hopefully, that will be rectified soon??? So in the absence of wine, I ordered their lychee cucumber sake-tail.

 

Too cucumber-y for me.

 

A better option was their beer offering. Ordered the Sansho ale, which paired well with the ramen.

Pros:

Delicious ramen.

Excellent fried sweet potatoes!!

Cons:

No tea?!? Isn’t that sacrilegious for a Japanese restaurant?

No wine.

Small, tight space.

Final Thoughts

Will return to try their regular pork bone ramen.

Would also like to try sitting at their “ramen” bar, which is seating in front of the kitchen and watching the cooks prep the food.