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| - Before I get down and dirty here with my pretentious opinions, let me start by saying Umami is definitely as close to authentic ramen as you can hope to find this side of Chicago. I had the tonkotsu ramen and it was plenty good. If you've never had the real thing (or you have, and now you're jonesing hard for anything resembling it) go forth, shell out twelve bucks, and enjoy the experience (if you don't mind your beers on the warm side, enjoy it with a draft, too.) Umami is tasty, and you could really do a lot worse.
However, I have a few not-so-quibbling quibbles.
My biggest complaint concerns ramen toppings (or the lack thereof.) Umami doesn't offer any of the traditional ramen condiments you might expect with your bowl of soup if you've had ramen in Japan (or heck, even in a large American city.) If you're going to call yourself a ramen bar, you really have to offer 7-spice pepper (shichimi togarashi), pickled ginger (benishoga), and toasted sesame seeds on the table. With all due respect to Umami's right to charge a dollar for a side of sriracha and red pepper flakes, serving supposedly legit ramen without offering the 3 cardinal condiments (for free or otherwise) is kind of like opening a burger and fries joint while being unaware of the existence of ketchup. Tonkotsu ramen especially just isn't authentic without pickled ginger on the side, and the fact that Umami doesn't know this is frankly kind of weird.
Less significantly, for $12 I'm not expecting a veritable trough of ramen, but I'd at least like the bowl to be more than half full - we are talking about broth and noodles after all; this is the cheap-arse, midnight staple food of drunk salary-men, not haute cuisine.
My final verdict: Umami is imminently edible, but not remarkable. The ramen could stand a more reasonable price, given the product, and it absolutely suffers from the lack of traditional compliments, but it has passably authentic, good, deep flavor. I can recommend it once, just for the hey.
...My water glass did smell like mouth, though.
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