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| - Nishikawa (According to Google) means "Western river" in Japanese and is a family name in Japan. Nishikawa Ramen (According to me) means flavorful and delicious noodle soup!
We came here on a Monday at 7 P.M. I saw on their website that they offered reservations so I contacted them for our reservation on Monday a few days before. When we arrived, I told the server that came to greet us that we had a reservation under my name. She gave me a blank stare and said "OK. Reservation. I'll...be...right...back..." Hm.... looks like someone forgot to write down our reservation... Or the server wasn't told about it...
It was fairly busy but there were a few tables still available and we were seated at a booth in a few minutes. The menu has pork based and chicken based broths, soba, and rice bowls. Appetizers include takoyaki, spicy squid, gyoza, and agedashi tofu. I went with the house black ramen and shared some takoyaki and spicy squid salad.
The ramen came out first before the appetizers. The broth was flavorful and filling, and the entire bowl was filled with noodles, pork, bamboo shoots, nori, kikurage (Wood ear mushroom), fried onion, garlic chips, and green onion. I loved the pork. It was very tender and meltingly soft. It's a more fatty cut of meat so this isn't your meal if you're looking for something healthy. The egg was halfway between soft boiled and hard boiled, as the very center of the yolk was runny but the outer ring was solid. There is a condiment bowl at the table with chopped red chile that I tried with a scoop of broth. It added flavor but only a mild-medium amount of heat for me. The noodles were thicker as advertised, and had a good texture and elasticity.
The squid came out around the same time the last ramen bowl arrived did and was lightly crisp from the fried battered coating. I enjoyed it with the spicy sauce. The takoyaki came out last, and was comped on our bill since it didn't come out sooner with the rest of our meals. The outer crisp coating was a great complement to the soft center and there was a good amount of octopus in each fritter. I would have liked a little more texture in the fritter other than batter and octopus but to each their own!
I also had an iced green tea which was excellent. It was very lightly sweet and refreshing.
Service could use some more work, but hey it's opening week I won't fault them too much for not getting service 100% right. In general all our servers were friendly.
My friend initially wanted to take home an order of ramen but was told they don't offer the ramen to go because the quality of the takeout will be inferior to eating it there since the noodles will get overcooked. So, she decided to order a rice bowl (Tonkatsu donburi) and was told they would serve it in a bowl and they would give her a styrofoam container but they wouldn't actually deliver it to her in the styrofoam container. OK..... strange.
Overall we had an enjoyable experience here and while it's a little bit of a drive from where I live, I'll be back if I'm in the area or want to try something else out with some friends.
EDIT 6-22: Jay from the restaurant contacted me the day after our reservation and thanked me for coming (I think he's the head chef/owner?). He said he wanted to come out and say hi to our table but they got swamped with orders so he didn't get a chance to. They are doing some internal adjustments and retraining their servers based on what they've encountered during their soft opening so they are temporarily closing but will open back up again soon for those that are ravenous for ramen!
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