Kambi Ramen, Stuyvesant Town

Thursday dinner at Kambi Ramen. Kellen had originally suggested Momofuku, which had an obscenely long wait. As an alternative, I recommended Kambi, the Stuy Town sister restaurant of Minca Ramen.

Kambi is much larger than Minca, with woody interiors like many other ramen joints. The overall atmosphere is similar to Minca, sans the kooky old school Nintendo-style background music. Busy, but not packed. Our table of 8 was seated immediately. The menu is identical to Minca. Pick your broth, pick your noodles. Now that it’s summer, they also have cold ramen specials if hot, steamy broth isn’t your thing. We ordered edaeme and pork gyoza ($5.25 for 5) to share. While I was tempted, I didn’t order any gyoza at Minca. Pretty stoked to try the gyoza this time around. Edaeme is edaeme. You can’t go wrong there. The pork gyoza was spot on. Delicate, but crispy. Light wrappers, juicy filling. Overall, a little greasy, but I generally expect that from gyoza. If you’re not good with chopsticks, they might be a little slippery to hold!I ordered the Shoyu Ramen (pork broth with soy sauce flavor, $10.50) with thin noodles. The broth was as tasty as the Minca Sio (salt and roast garlic flavor, chicken and pork broth, $10.50). Rich and delicious porky broth, but it didn’t have the buttery, velvety texture. I assume the chicken broth in Minca Sio was responsible for that. Even without that delightfully buttery texture, this was pretty amazing.Like Minca, Kambi is quite generous with toppings. Oh. My. Goodness. That char shu pork is sinful. Tender, juicy, fatty (but in a good way). Kambi and Minca both serve gigantic pieces of pork. One piece was almost as large as my fist! We’re talking some serious porky goodness here. Pork overload!

So far, my orders have had a good balance of broth versus noodles, but it seems like many of the other ramen bowls have too much noodles. I’ve noticed this at both Minca and Kambi. A lot of “Wow, so much noodles!” comments going around, and that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Kambi and Minca both rank fairly high on my ramen scale, but are definitely not in my top 3. Both are cozy and comforting. Good spots for a casual meal. The ramen seems authentic, none of that new age ramen business. The food seems to have some Chinese influences though. Visit Minca for groups of 2 or 3, even 4 people is pushing it. Visit Kambi for larger groups.