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| - Xinji Noodle Bar was a surprising delight! I came here as part of Yelp's supper club excited to find a ramen shop in Cleveland close to where I lived. I've scoured ramen shops around the world (including Japan) and most extensively in Chicago. What I found in Xinji noodle bar is a ramen restaurant that stacks up in the top quartile of ramen shops. While I will not count it as the best ramen shop, it definitely is a solid contender on the world stage of ramen shops.
I'll start with the sides. Between attendees at the supper club, we got several versions of dumplings, special kimchi balls, and an order of the mango pork bao. Overall, these were pretty good and I can somewhat agree that the prices may be slightly high for what you get, but as they were still fairly good, I'll give them good marks here.
+ Dumplings - delicious and well presented
+ Kimchi balls - a little kitschy, something I probably wouldn't order again, but fairly good
+ Pork bao - probably the most overpriced item, but still quite good
Then to the main event... the Ramen, I got the spicy miso. I'll start with the noodles. Their noodles are actually quite good. With a slight wave in shape and a bit irregular in width (not uniform throughout), these were some of the more unique noodles I've seen, but still a good chew and bite. It also held onto the soup flavor well, which is something I always look for in a ramen noodle.
+ The broth was flavorful and actually reasonably spicy (unlike many other places that just have a hint of spice). While it wasn't a mind blowing broth, it was clearly quite good.
+ The chasu pork that came with it was actually very good as well, although it was a bit large and could have been cut into slightly more manageable pieces.
+ The soy egg was the typical golden egg, while it was supposedly soaked in soy sauce, it didn't add too much outside of the typical golden egg.
Service was fair. We got our food in a reasonable amount of time, but service wasn't overly friendly or engaging, especially as we came with a group that included people who didn't eat ramen very often.
Bottom line, this is a solid ramen shop, especially for a city without a huge Japanese restaurant scene. Mainly come for the ramen as it's what they should be known for and order an appetizer if you're in the mood, but they aren't "must haves" on the menu. You'll be happy you stopped in.
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