Laki Ramen in Los Angeles is a small, well-decorated place in a small plaza not far away from the Petersen Automotive Museum. According to the website, the shop’s owner trained at Menya Takeichi in Japan before setting up shop with their support here. Shoutout to u/cjbee9891 for the recommendation, because it’s a hole in the wall place that I’m genuinely excited to revisit if I went to LA again.
I went with a party and ordered the clear chicken ramen and the dan dan ramen. We got the karaage chicken and fried shrimp cocktail, and the others in my party got the tsukemen and the chicken baitang.
Although they weren’t the main courses, I felt the karaage chicken and fried shrimp cocktail were good enough starters elevated by their accompanying sauces, which I think were made in-house.
When the clear chicken ramen arrived, I had a really good feeling about what I was going to eat. The meal visually resembled the very refined Japanese bowls that I’d seen people like Namajapan and Ramen Guide Japan cover in their articles/posts. It was a light but delicious broth with straight noodles, matched to well-prepared toppings—green onions, three kinds of meat (two slices of pork, one slice of two different chicken cuts), bamboo shoots, seaweed, and a soft-boiled egg. I was surprised by the bamboo shoots; I normally don’t like them, but they were very flavorful in this bowl, to the point where I think removing them would take away from it. I do feel the meats could have been a little softer and more savory, but that is my personal liking, and I didn’t think they took away from the bowl at all—I haven’t encountered a shop here in the US that does something like that, actually, and now I can understand why shops would offer different kinds of meats in the first place. It was a bowl I would definitely eat again.
I got a dan dan ramen next and was impressed with it as well. There’s a strong, but not overpowering, peanut flavor in the dan dan ramen’s broth, and the spice was also strong but not overpowering. It didn’t overdo either, and that’s a hard balance to strike. It tasted so different from the clear chicken ramen; the only common thread between them was the type of noodles (I think all of the ramen bowls share the same thinner straight noodles, while the tsukemen has the thicker noodles). Like the clear chicken ramen, the toppings were quite good. A word of warning, this bowl is pricey—more than $20 as of this writing—but I also haven’t tasted a dan dan ramen like this in the other places I’ve visited, so you are paying for a quality bowl that stands out from the others.
I had sips from the tsukemen and chicken baitang and can say that each of the bowls my party and I enjoyed were all different in their own ways. Each broth was presented very nicely, and each broth was unique enough that they were all worth a shot. Chicken paitan/baitang isn’t a type of broth that is popular here (or, at least, as popular as tonkotsu), but after tasting Laki and Ramen Akimoto, I think there’s a very strong case for it and would love to see more places offering it.
Parking is quite limited in the plaza with Laki Ramen, so come early or prepare for a walk. It is well worth the trip.
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Laki Ramen in Los Angeles is a small, well-decorated place in a small plaza not far away from the Petersen Automotive Museum. According to the website, the shop’s owner trained at Menya Takeichi in Japan before setting up shop with their support here. Shoutout to u/cjbee9891 for the recommendation, because it’s a hole in the wall place that I’m genuinely excited to revisit if I went to LA again.
I went with a party and ordered the clear chicken ramen and the dan dan ramen. We got the karaage chicken and fried shrimp cocktail, and the others in my party got the tsukemen and the chicken baitang.
Although they weren’t the main courses, I felt the karaage chicken and fried shrimp cocktail were good enough starters elevated by their accompanying sauces, which I think were made in-house.
When the clear chicken ramen arrived, I had a really good feeling about what I was going to eat. The meal visually resembled the very refined Japanese bowls that I’d seen people like Namajapan and Ramen Guide Japan cover in their articles/posts. It was a light but delicious broth with straight noodles, matched to well-prepared toppings—green onions, three kinds of meat (two slices of pork, one slice of two different chicken cuts), bamboo shoots, seaweed, and a soft-boiled egg. I was surprised by the bamboo shoots; I normally don’t like them, but they were very flavorful in this bowl, to the point where I think removing them would take away from it. I do feel the meats could have been a little softer and more savory, but that is my personal liking, and I didn’t think they took away from the bowl at all—I haven’t encountered a shop here in the US that does something like that, actually, and now I can understand why shops would offer different kinds of meats in the first place. It was a bowl I would definitely eat again.
I got a dan dan ramen next and was impressed with it as well. There’s a strong, but not overpowering, peanut flavor in the dan dan ramen’s broth, and the spice was also strong but not overpowering. It didn’t overdo either, and that’s a hard balance to strike. It tasted so different from the clear chicken ramen; the only common thread between them was the type of noodles (I think all of the ramen bowls share the same thinner straight noodles, while the tsukemen has the thicker noodles). Like the clear chicken ramen, the toppings were quite good. A word of warning, this bowl is pricey—more than $20 as of this writing—but I also haven’t tasted a dan dan ramen like this in the other places I’ve visited, so you are paying for a quality bowl that stands out from the others.
I had sips from the tsukemen and chicken baitang and can say that each of the bowls my party and I enjoyed were all different in their own ways. Each broth was presented very nicely, and each broth was unique enough that they were all worth a shot. Chicken paitan/baitang isn’t a type of broth that is popular here (or, at least, as popular as tonkotsu), but after tasting Laki and Ramen Akimoto, I think there’s a very strong case for it and would love to see more places offering it.
Parking is quite limited in the plaza with Laki Ramen, so come early or prepare for a walk. It is well worth the trip.