Chicken Shoyu at Umami Ramen in Stuttgart, Germany 🇩🇪

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1. Umami Ramen is one of the latest additions to the ramen scene in Stuttgart. Situated in the center of Stuttgart, in the old location of Ramen 8. Umami Ramen serves a full range of ramen variants, including chicken shoyu, white tonkotsu ramen, miso ramen and vegetarian bowls. According to my research, it is run by a Japanese couple, so my expectations were to get at least passable bowls of ramen.
   For my first visit, I went with their chicken shoyu ramen, which I think is a good way to compare and see on what level this shop really is.

   The soup was a clear chicken chintan, topped with a good amount of chiyu chicken fat, which gave the whole bowl a good chicken aroma. The soup was seasoned with a relatively light shoyu soy sauce tare, which had me wishing for a bit more punch, but was not bad by any means.

   The noodles are made inhouse and have a certain “homemade” quality to them. Unfortunately, for me, they were the weakest part of the bowl. I am not a noodle expert by any means, but they tasted a bit off to me, which might be due to the wheat flour being used and maybe due to insufficient use of kansui. They had a strong bready wheat flavor and lacked a good slurpiness. While they were not bad, I would not call them good, which is a shame for inhouse made noodles and the effort that is connected to making them.

   The toppings had a couple of question marks for me as well. I did not fully understand why the bowl is only topped with sous vide chicken breast slices and not with a mix of chashu, like some slices of pork belly or other pork parts. The chicken breast was juicy, but unfortunately not very seasoned, which did not work well with the already quite light soup. The egg might have been a tad overdone, the yolk could already easily be removed as a whole from the white. Serving only half an egg is also no bueno in my eyes. The naruto fish cake is what it is, pieces of flavorless fish cake that look nice. The menma was on the same level as the stuff I can buy in the supermarket in Japan, so not too bad, but I don’t think they are doing anything special here.

   Overall, the whole bowl is enjoyable and the probably best bowl I ever had in Germany. If you are in the area and want to have a proper bowl of ramen, Ramen Umami is the right place, if you don’t have the expectation to get something equal to Tokyo’s top shops.
   If you want to see some more of this bowl and the shop, check out this short video: https://youtu.be/StYIoJJEctA