Predictions about ramen as Houston’s hot dining trend have cooled in recent months. What once seemed like a movement that would sweep the city has settled into outposts of five restaurants — California’s Jinya Ramen, Seattle’s Samurai Noodle, Washington Avenue late night spot Ninja Ramen, west Houston’s Ramen Jin, and Chinatown favorite Tiger Den.
Still, a truly acclaimed restaurant could capture diners’ attention, and it seems that one of them has set its sights on Houston. Tatsu Aikawa, the executive chef and co-owner of Austin’s celebrated Ramen Tatsu-Ya, is also the registered agent for a company called “I Own This Dirt, LLC.” That company has purchased a property in Montrose at 1714 California Street, according to Harris County property tax records.
Located just behind celebrated Italian restaurant Da Marco, the lot’s size of almost 15,000-square feet seems to include the adjacent property at 1722 California, which was once slated to be home to Andes Cafe chef/owner David Guerrero’s upscale South American restaurant Evo.
While buying property that happens to contain a restaurant on it and opening a restaurant in that building are two different things, the purchase certainly suggests that Aikawa and co-owner Takuya “Tako”
Matsumoto have put their long-delayed plans to open in Houston back on track. When all this is happening remains a bit of a mystery.
CultureMap has uncovered the owners of Ramen Tatsu-Ya purchased on the 1700 block California.
Records show I Own This Dirt LLC purchased the lot at 1714 California and the adjacent property in the Cherryhurst neighborhood in September. Houston Chronicle also reported on the transaction in October but didn’t link the owner to Ramen Tatsu-Ya:
I Own This Dirt has purchased a 3,370-square-foot restaurant building at 1722 California. Anthony Heins of Heins Properties represented the buyer. Josh Jacobs and Tasha Bason of Edge Realty Partners represented the seller, Bengolan Co.
A large ramen restaurant is going in on Katy Freeway between Kirkwood and Dairy Ashford in the Whataburger center. Can’t recall the name, but it’s still under construction.
That’s great. This instant ramen thing wasn’t around when I was in college, or if it was, I was out of the loop. So I’ve been very late to try them. There’s a guy on eG who regularly posts about meals he’s created starting with a packet then adding to it. There definitely are some that are very good but ever since I read the Serious Eats article on Sun Noodle, I’ve been wanting to try them.
According to the website they should be available at Nippon Daido, Super H Mart, and a place up in Spring I’ve never heard about. That’s one of the things I was looking for at Super H Mart that I didn’t find and will have to go back for.
My THIRD trip to Ramen Jin in the past couple years since they opened, and that’s saying something. Most of us only return to those places that we really like and this is one of those. I still don’t know how to like ramen in Houston in the summer months, which is actually most of the year, but working on that. On my recent return, there was one improvement. Every customer was offered a carafe of iced water for free. Previously, there was a line of sugary cans of sodas for sale and that’s it. The sodas are still there, but still no bottled water. And every table had this water this time, which was tap water with ice. Hint: offer spring water bottles and charge.
Stopped by Samurai Noodle and Ramen Bar Ichi while I was in Houston for the holidays. For the record, I think Ramen Tatsuya has some serious flaws and I’m not a fan. Noodles are limp and gross, while the broth has this lingering unpleasant rotten funk on the aftertaste. I’ve tried hundreds of bowls of ramen over the years and while there’s some that are pretty heavy on the fatty stuff, I just feel absolutely terrible after having a bowl at Tatsuya.
Also, just my pet peeve that a lot of ramen shops don’t let customers specify how they want the noodles done, so I picked these two places since they’re known for noodles made in house.
Extra firm at Samurai Noodle was exactly what I wanted, wish the rest of the bowl were as stellar. Better than Tatsuya for sure.
Ramen Bar Ichi’s ajitama (the soft boiled egg) is comparable to some of the best eggs I’ve tried in Japan. All around, I found Ramen Bar Ichi to have the more solid bowl! Broth was rich yet still clean easy to drink. They also had a TON of green onion in their ramen.
Bar Ichi serves their ramen more al dente than Ramen Jin down Westheimer at Wilcrest. I actually prefer the softer, silkier version, but I’m not sure if Jin makes theirs in house.
