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| - When my Japanese coworker recommended this place as being, "not terrible", I was quite excited to try it.
If you're the kind of person who has never experienced ramen except for cheap instant noodles in college, then... surprise, surprise! the $12 offering at Ramen Bar is far superior to a disposable $0.50 meal. But, if you have ever been to Japan, or to any large American or Canadian city that has real ramen, then you will immediately realize that what the Ramen Bar serves up is only a poor imitation at best.
I tried the shoyu chashu ramen, a classic dish that earned the Tsuta ramen shop in Tokyo a Michelin Star. At the Ramen Bar, the shoyu broth had none of the delicate balance of saltiness and umami that one would expect, but instead tasted just like any $1 shoyu-flavoured instant noodle seasoning, except strongly diluted with water so that it was even worse. Instead of richly marbled chashu that's sliced to 0.5 mm thick and melts in your mouth, they give you... stringy pork monoliths that are rock hard, tasteless, and take away all the moisture in your mouth so as to scrub against your tongue like sandpaper.
Well, at least they give you quite a large quantity of meat, so they've got that going for them. The server was quite nice too. It is deplorable indeed that many Pittsburghers will never get to try the real delicacy that is ramen.
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