Different - but tasty concept - binchotan grilled chicken ramen in a creamy chicken broth.
Decent chew on a medium caliber noodle (bucatini thickness).
Can’t say I have ever had such a smokey taste in a soup - it’s a little like kissing a cigarette smoker.
For fans of Yakitori ya Toshi San is helping them get off the ground and working there for now. Counter and dining spaces are cleaned up but still the yakitori ya footprint.
Suntory Premium malts is the beer
Kissing a cigarette smoker can be pleasant or extremely unpleasant depending on the situation and person. 
Would you go back?
Did you go today? Looks like they said they were closed 3 days ago due to an electrical issue.
Putting this on my to do it list! Walk-in is fine i assume?
Yes - today
Yes - opened at 11:30 and was pretty full by noon.
Ohmigod, we were just on Sawtelle ourselves today not far from there!
Going there now to have a corrective experience of the dreck I had earlier today from elsewhere…
Thanks for the heads up, @CiaoBob. The broth is lovely and indeed almost creamy (a lot of cornstarch?). Egg and chicken chasu both very nicely seasoned.
We decided to avoid the BBQ chicken ramen based on your comments, and the BBQ chicken over a rice was just great.
BTW this and Ramen Ochi, we’ve got some amazing ramen in the “immediate” West LA area…
So jealous you made it first 
will definitely be there in the next 2 days
To suggest they use cornstarch to thicken their soup… some would find that offensive.
Thickened with chicken heads and feet! (Gelatine)
I’ve made it clear multiple times across that I don’t cook. In addition to informing me that I’m being offensive, you could’ve also provided information on how you think (or know) it was thickened, which I (and anyone else who doesn’t cook) would’ve found very helpful.
Great bounce on the noodles, lovely broth -heavy charcoal flavor / smoke on the chicken but it all works together. Will definitely be back
Ended up in here by accident looking for a quick meal for the kids after Kumon. Watching them prepare bowls of ramen and charring the chicken I remembered @CiaoBob’s post about kissing a smoker and came here to confirm this was the same spot. I’m far from a ramen expert, but I love ramen and I really enjoyed my bowl here. The flavor was more char than smoke to me as in I was reminded of backyard BBQ rather than Texas smoked meats. The kids loved their fried chicken and ground chicken bowls. The latter so sweet that I don’t think any kids would say they didn’t like it. Very nice alternative to the bowls of liquid pig you can get on Sawtelle. I’ll be back.
@CiaoBob Did you see Toshi-san working there? I’m really hoping he decides to resurrect Yakitoriya in some form in the near future
Ramen soup bases can be broken down into two main catagories.
Chintan - clear soup focused on clarity of stock.
Paitan - cloudy soup where the bones are cooked much longer breaking down all sorts of stuff into the broth (the menu here says slow cooked but in my experience this usually means a pretty good boil for a very long time).
Most shops in LA serve tonkotsu broth which is a pork bone based paitan. It looks to me like this shop is a Tori-paitan where mostly or all the base stock is from chicken bones (and feet and skin) that are boiled over a very very long period of time or with a pressure cooker (how you do it at home) until they are falling apart. Lots of shops also blend the bones into the stock after they are soft enough to create a thick emulsion.
I don’t know what they are doing here specifically but chances of it being corn starch are…quite low. I’m by no means a ramen chef but I don’t know if I’ve seen cornstarch in a Japanese ramen soup -but I imagine it could be in something like a mapo tofu ramen at a machichuka shop?
I once read a recipe on blog of someone trying to make a paitan broth at home and wondering where the grit was from that they had at a shop so they blended cauliflower and I just thought “that very fine grit at the shop is probably bone dust” which happens depending how you strain it after blending.
This is all very broad stuff as there’s sometimes dozens of ingredients that go into a soup. I def want to try this place.
Yes
He was there at opening hour their first week
Don’t know how long he’s staying on
No luck on Yakitoriya (also I had no idea until just now that someone wrote an entire book on his Yakitori technique–that’s gonna be fun to dig into), but I am happy to say he’s still there. He personally walked the bowl to me at 11:40AM on a Thursday morning.
I went to Ramen Chikumo yesterday, which opened a few doors south last month. It’s a quality chicken paitan, relatively light (as far as paitan goes) with a fantastic pork char sui and decent homemade noodles. I believe they do their chicken sous vide; it’s very tender, but I personally have never enjoyed the texture of sous vide chicken. I found it very unfortunate they decided to open up next to Torisoba Sumiya. I enjoyed my meal there, but during the middle of it, I wished I had chosen Torisoba.
They have the best ramen on Sawtelle, the best chicken paitan in LA County, and I would argue that it’s one of the best bowls of ramen, in general, that we have. The noodles have perfect qq for me (erring on the side of quite firm). Great balance of thick cut and thinly shaved scallions. The broth is sublime–veering into gravy territory, but perfectly delicate, and it captures the essence of chicken flavor. It’s a refined boullion on steroids. I have no idea how they manage to achieve it, and I wish I had the words to describe it.
They also pay attention to some nice details you don’t usually find outside of Japan. If you have a bag, they’ll ask you if you’d like a foldable bin for it that they’ll place on the floor next to you.
I know a lot of people love the #1 and the immediate contrast of the charcoal flavor with the broth, but I very much prefer the pure taste of #2 with the chicken (or the combo chicken rice) on the side. You can experience both tastes separately, or mix and match, and you’re absolutely swimming in the aroma of charcoal with it just sitting nearby, either way.
Towards the end of the bowl, I like to add the smallest amount of yuzu kosho, which is transformative and goes a long way in cutting through the unctuousness.
(All that said, please do try to support Chikumo. We need more ramen places here that aren’t just yet-another-fucking-tonkotsu joint.)
Do you like their chicken paitan over Mensho Tokyo’s?
I’ve only had Mensho’s signature bowl. Broth just slightly too heavy for me. I’m also not a huge fan of truffle in ramen. (Except, weirdly, Kazan–because it’s light and they’re doing their own non-trad thing over there.) The duck char siu was fantastic. Their noodles are perfect texture, but I’m not big on thicc boys in a bowl. These are all just extremely personal preferences, though. It was extremely good and the attention to detail in every single component was obvious and appreciated.
I would like to try their “old school” unadulterated version. Maybe when the line dies down. I’m not super huge on waiting for an hour to pay $30 for a bowl on a weekday after I get off work. The line might speak to how good their bowls are, though.
Do you prefer it over Torisoba?
[i deleted the previous post because it didn’t show up as a direct reply, somehow. i have no shame or anything to hide here lol]
Oddly enough, I’ve only ever had Torisoba’s BBQ chicken bowl so I can’t speak of the ramen yet. It’s pretty close to work so I’ll check out their ramen one of these days.
