A first course of kimchi or dumplings followed by a ramen soup and a drink is 10 Euros at the Ramen Shop Barcelona in the Gothic Quarter. The plainest of shops. Most likely your primary indication that you are there will be a line of people shuffling their weight from one foot to the other waiting to be seated.
I took some friends who were visiting from London on a hunch that it might be good or at least that it wouldn’t be bad. They couldn’t believe the small price tag and I was reminded that this city has good affordable food.
Ramen shop is a few Asahi posters and bucket fulls of red paint. The red walls are echoed in the red t-shirts that the staff wear emblazoned with the shops name and website. You order off a laminated A1 menu (the pictures are affixed to the shop window if you want to have a look).
In minutes, the food is out. We help ourselves to the pot of disposable chopsticks set in the middle of the table and start slurping away. To my taste, the noodles could do with a better bite but I am satisfied with the flavour and delighted that my friends are enjoying lunch so.
Eating at Ramen Shop is a little like when you’ve been buying a brand for years and one day you switch to the supermarkets own brand only to find that the taste is mostly the same. What you’ve paying for is the branding. Same here – with a plain jane name like Ramen shop and really only the smallest twitches towards a distinctive interior. This place is interchangeable with many but one of their well priced bowls of ramen will leave you satiated and will impress a posse of London pals to boot.
Ramen Shop Barcelona
Carrer d’en Gignàs, 3
08002 Gothic Quarter
facebook.com/ramenshopbcn
More Ramen to be found at the following:
Grasshopper Ramen
Kobuta i Mes
Koku Ramen Kitchen
Tonkotsu Ramen
Ramen Ya-Hiro
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