Located just around the corner from the City Museum, Hiro Asian Kitchen provides a combination of Asian fusion offerings with a cool ambience, decorative cloud-like lights, a modern stone wall by the bar and private oak wood seating sections.

It is a stark difference from the maroon booths and blank Word-document-white walls of Washington University’s Bear’s Den. Its menu varies for brunch, lunch and dinner, and all its dishes are influenced by Southeast Asian cuisine.

From the appetizers or the to-share section of the menu, there are orders ranging from lotus leaf wrapped sticky rice, salt and pepper calamari and Korean fried chicken wings to pork belly and pot stickers.

A popular order is the Dim Sum Platter. The platter comes with three pork and shrimp-filled siu mai and a variation of Chinese dumplings dipped in ponzu sauce and topped with green onions and roe. The sour tang of the ponzu sauce really gives a refreshing taste to the delicious and warm pork and shrimp filling.

For the main entree, a featured dish is the Breakfast Ramen. It comes with shiitake mushrooms, braised pork belly and wheat ramen noodles in a bone broth. I really enjoyed the Breakfast Ramen because while the noodles are ramen, the bone broth base and vegetable ingredients of bok choy, cilantro and bean sprouts veer towards that of Vietnamese pho, so the base wasn’t as thick and oily as most ramen soups are.

While the ingredients made the ramen bowl tasty, there was a surplus of vegetables and very few shiitake mushrooms. The overall portion size was also bigger than it looks. A personal highlight of the Breakfast Ramen is the poached egg that is perfectly soft with liquid-like whites and running yolk inside. The strong, salty flavor of the pork belly also pairs well with bone broth. And bonus: the drink menu includes Taiwanese milk tea, jasmine and oolong loose tea!

Hiro Asian Kitchen is conveniently a step away from the City Museum if you are planning a day trip to downtown St. Louis. They give an authentic impression of savory Asian fusion food.