Ryowa Ramen, Mountain View, CA

859 Villa Street
Mountain View, CA
(650) 965-8829
M-Sat: 11:30-23:00
Sun: 11:30-21:00

This is actually the first ramen-ya that I've been to. I am not sure when they opened the shop, but their location is probably the best in the area (off of Castro Street) where there are always good number of people, especially Far-East Asians. During the lunch hours, there can be 10, 20 people waiting inside and outside. Their business has been so good that they opened another shop in Berkeley recently (and their commercials are on KTSF).

The seating area is mostly bars (for about 25 people) and several small tables (two, I think). They have a TV showing some recorded Japanese TV shows (mostly talk shows such as Hey! Hey! Hey! Music Champ). They also have a couple of shelves with manga, but I don't think they have been updating the inventory for a while.

They say they are "Kobe" ramen. I know where it is, but I don't have a slightest idea what that means. The soup has three flavors: ryowa (not sure what it is), shouyu (soy sauce based), and miso (soy bean paste based). The chashu (pork slices) is a pretty common type of thin slices of pork belly. For lunch, they have combos (ramen, gyoza and a bowl of rice).

Besides those three and gyoza, they didn't use to have much variation. But they've been adding others. They have butabara (fattier pork) ramen (only served in the evening if I remember correctly), butter corn ramen (which seems to be popular among Chinese customers) and chicken karaage (fried chicken without the batter).