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.
