Slurp Slurp Slurp

New restaurant prepares to bowl Austin over with ramen burger and more

Yoshi Ramen's menu includes everything from bao sliders to ramen burgers.

Ready, get set, slurp. Tuesday, January 16, marks the soft opening of Yoshi Ramen, a new shop located in the Marq Uptown building on 3320 Harmon Ave. Regular service begins Friday, January 19, although weather may delay that date.

The concept is from chef Stacy Chen, the owner of longtime vegan staple Veggie Heaven and the daughter of Veggie Heaven founder, Mei Chen. The new restaurant pays homage to Chen’s grandmother, who operated a ramen shop in Osaka in the ’80s, with decor that playfully nods to tradition.

Unlike many shops around town, Yoshi does not focus primarily on one type of ramen. The wide-ranging menu offers several styles like salt-seasoned shio; pork bone-based tonkotsu; and a vegan miso ramen with soy protein, spinach, bok choy, roasted tomatoes, corn, and bamboo shoots. There are also a few lesser known styles like tantanmen, a Chinese-influenced dish similar to dan dan noodles, featuring a pork bone and chicken broth, bean sprouts, roasted jalapeño, and minced sesame pork.

On February 15, the menu will expand to include ramen burgers and donburi rice bowls. The burgers are made with a ramen bun topped with Angus beef or a vegan patty and various toppings like pickled onion, chili aioli, and slaw. The donburi will be available with chashu pork, shoyu tare (a soy-based sauce) chicken, barbecue pork belly, Sichuan chicken, and soy protein.

To go along with the bowls, Yoshi offers a range of starters, from favorites like fried spring rolls, edamame, fried gyoza (both pork and plant-based), and bao sliders to original dishes like Yoshi fries topped with chashu pork bits, scallions, and a cilantro-basil yuzu aioli.

The drink menu is small but considered. There is no liquor license, but Yoshi offers a small selection of Japanese and local beers and sparkling cocktails like the Full of Passion, champagne with a passion fruit infusion, and mimosas. For nondrinkers, the menu offers matcha milk teas in mango and strawberry.

Yoshi Ramen initial hours are 5-10pm, seven days a week. Lunch and an expanded menu will be launched in the upcoming weeks.

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Peak Plates

7 Austin restaurants make OpenTable's top 100 for 2024

Jeffrey's Restaurant/Instagram

Jeffrey's Restaurant is a great example of the type of fancy, well-established restaurant that made the list.

Restaurant reservation website OpenTable has issued its new list of the top 100 restaurants in America for 2024, and seven Austin restaurants have made the list. That's already impressive at a glance — 7 percent of the entire national list in just one city — but compared to other Texas cities, it's huge. Austin is the only Texas city to have more than one restaurant on the list.

The "2024's Top 100 Restaurants" list is a compilation of the most sought-after and top-ranked restaurants in the U.S. based on 14 million verified reviews on OpenTable from October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024. Restaurants are not ranked, but arranged in alphabetical order by state.

Austin's seven restaurants (including several repeats from OpenTable's 2023 list) are:

Aba: Known for its laid-back, yet fancy patio and being a popular spot for visiting celebrities
J Carver's: Known for a commitment to the classic steakhouse experience and legitimately fancy dining
Jeffrey's Restaurant: Known for fine dining, a connection to Austin before its boom, and a fantastic wine program
Red Ash Italia: Known for approachable, yet high-quality Italian food with rustic touches
Sammie's Italian: Known for its romantic take on the archetype of an East Coast Italian joint
Uchi: Known for bringing Austin into the national sushi conversation and defining the scene
Uchiko: Known for a cool atmosphere and getting creative with sushi and other small plates

Austinites will probably not be surprised by this list, which names some very well-established restaurants that are all upscale. These qualities tend to appeal to similar lists, regardless of who's curating them.

It is interesting, given that the list was democratically based on user ratings, that there were not more beloved food trailers or casual spots. However, other factors that led to high rankings included alerts set and reservations made ahead — things that don't really apply to even the most awesome taco truck.

Mediterranean food was a trend among the Austin picks. Red Ash Italia and Sammie's Italian are, as the names would imply, completely dedicated to Italian food, while Aba covers a wider swath of the Mediterranean. There were also two steakhouses: J Carver's and Jeffrey's Restaurant.

As list-perusers may have guessed, Uchi and Uchiko are in the same family of restaurants, with Uchi being the more formal and Uchiko being a bit more accessible for drop-in meals and cocktails. But are two more incognito duos of sibling restaurants on the list: J Carver's and Red Ash, and Jeffrey's Restaurant and Sammie's Italian.

That could be a coincidence. It could also be a reflection of the utility of money and experience in opening a good restaurant, or a lesson about the effects of good (and expensive) marketing. Whatever it is, it doesn't sound like hospitality groups had any direct sway on how OpenTable made its choices.

This list was different from the inaugural list of OpenTable Icons, which launched in 2024. The "Icons" list chose restaurants that are getting a lot of buzz, which ended up being more subjective. It also seemed to let in — as a side effect of the process, rather than a hard eligibility rule — more new and Mexican restaurants. Two restaurants are on both lists: Red Ash and Jeffrey's.

Restaurants outside of Austin that made the Top 100 list, organized alphabetically, are:

Hudson House — Dallas
Steak 48 — Houston
Signature — San Antonio

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