Nami Ramen
46 N. Central Ave., Clayton, MO
Driving Time: 6 min
Uber Cost: $7-9
Metro Accessibility: 10 min walk from Clayton station

Brock Workman | Student Life

A guideline many food critics follow is not to publish a review of a restaurant very soon after it opens for business. The growing pains involved with creating a menu from scratch, training new staff and judging customer interest mean that a restaurant might be very different a month after its opening. Nami Ramen, which has garnered an unfair 2.5 stars on Yelp since its opening in January, deserves a second look.

Nami Ramen is in Clayton, just a couple blocks off of Forsyth. This makes it very convenient if you have access to a car. The restaurant is decently sized, with capacity to comfortably seat around 40 people. The whole layout is very modern, with an Asian decor with the popular exposed piping style that is common in many younger restaurants. There are smaller, two to four-person tables, but most of the seating is in bar stools around the window or at a communal table that runs nearly the length of the restaurant. As much as I would have loved for there to be seats at the bar facing the chefs, there were only a couple of spots, as the servers’ station took up most of the space.

Food is ordered at a cash register but is bussed to the tables, which places the experience between the fast food and sit-down restaurant tiers, much like Noodles & Company or Sauce On the Side. Nami Ramen, however, toes the upper-end of that line, as everything from the bowls to the takeout containers are higher quality. This is definitely reflected in the price. A standard bowl costs around $15, meaning diners can expect to spend around $20 if they buy a drink or split an appetizer.

The slightly greater price range raised my expectations of the food, but, at the very least, when I received my food it was not lacking in quantity. The stacks of takeout containers and tubs make sense once you receive your meal, as I had a difficult time finishing my entire serving in one sitting.

Brock Workman | Student Life

The noodles served at Nami are far from the cheap, 50-cent packs college students are notorious for eating. The Nami style includes noodles soaking in a broth seasoned differently for each type of bowl, with meat, vegetables and spices floating with a sheet of seaweed for dipping on the side and Nami’s brilliant signature soft-boiled egg poking through the top of the broth.

I have been able to try about half of the noodle bowls in my two visits to the restaurant. I enjoyed all of the bowls, but, where some excelled, others seemed to fall short. I loved the flavoring for the broth in the spicy jigoku ramen bowl, but felt shorted in the quantity of meat I was given compared to the bacon-laden breakfast ramen, which conversely had a blander broth. These are still tasty noodle bowls—a month of experimentation has helped Nami hone down better recipes—I just have not tried a bowl yet that I see myself craving.

Nami has found a good formula for selling noodles in a town that has not quite caught on to the ramen craze. Despite this, I still find myself hoping they can fix a few puzzling aspects of their design. For example, I don’t understand why they mix nice bowls and spoons given for every meal with disposable wooden chopsticks. I know that using disposable chopsticks is common fare for many Asian restaurants, but I still would be much more appreciative of chopsticks that didn’t get soggy with the broth of the ramen. Also, my first trip to Nami had me waiting a little while for my food. Though I’m not necessarily against waiting, since it makes me feel like my food is being made fresh, I was suspicious that they had not quite nailed their process for making these meals yet. My second trip confirmed this, when my ramen come out much more quickly with about the same number of other customers there.

I recommend visiting Nami and forming your own opinions of their food, but I would not expect Nami to be the St. Louis staple that other unique restaurants have captured over the years, even considering St. Louis’s lack of other ramen-based outlets.