COVID Keeps A Ramen Master in San Diego

Sick of cooking? Order takeout! The SDM staff is sharing their recommendations, plus one expert’s pick, for where to get takeout this week in San Diego. You can satisfy your hunger cravings and help support our local restaurants all with one order, so dig in!

Troy’s Picks

From Troy Johnson, food critic

Wa Dining Okan

Order: Bento box

3860 Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa

ED Fernandez Restaurant

Order: Birria

2265 Flower Avenue, Nestor

Marie’s Picks

From Marie Tutko, editor in chief

Hawaiian Fresh Seafood

Order: Ahi poke

6491 Weathers Place, Sorrento Valley

HiroNori Craft Ramen

Order: Shoyu ramen

3803 Fifth Avenue, Hillcrest

David’s Picks

From David Martin, digital media director

Louisiana Purchase

Order: Crab boil

2305 University Avenue, North Park

Thotsakan

Order: Thai lunch special

1153 Sixth Avenue, Downtown

Erica’s Picks

From Erica Nichols, associate editor

Shawarma Guys

Order: Lemon cream chop fries

3012 Grape Street, South Park

Wicked Maine Lobster

Order: Lobster tacos

3040 Carlsbad Boulevard, Carlsbad; 2820 Historic Decatur Road, Liberty Station; 550 West Date Street, Little Italy

Tim Mays’s Picks

From episode 188 of the Happy Half Hour podcast

Buona Forchetta South Park

Order: Neapolitan pizza

3001 Beech Street, South Park

Pizzeria Luigi

Order: Custom pies

1137 25th Street, Golden Hill; 717 Seacoast Drive, Imperial Beach; 2121 El Cajon Boulevard, North Park

Shawarma Guys 

Blonde City Creative

Sometimes the canary makes it out. Goes into the coal mine, coughs a touch, pulls it together, darts for the light, lives a long and prosperous life. Tajima was the canary in San Diego’s ramen mine. Restaurant ramen was a completely unproven crapshoot in 1994 when Sam Morikizono took over an existing restaurant on Convoy. He surely didn’t plan on serving it. Ramen was huge in Japan, but few serious restaurateurs stateside gave it a second thought. Ramen was just the beloved plastic package in the bulk-food aisle (thanks to the legend, Momofuku Ando).

“Before I took over Tajima, the place was a Japanese home-food restaurant. Tempura, sushi, noodles,” Morikizono says. “I had a lot of Japanese regulars and they’d always ask me to make this or that. I cooked everything. One day regulars asked me to make ramen. It wasn’t popular in the US at the time, but I made it, and it was a hit.”

Born and raised near Osaka, Japan, Morikizono came to the US after high school at age 19 and cooked in restaurants to make it. Restaurant kitchens have always been key harbors in the making-it process. “I wanted to see a different country,” he says. “In the beginning I didn’t plan to stay forever. I didn’t like it much.”

He was working at Shogun restaurant in LA (he didn’t like LA much, either) when they opened a location in San Diego, and he moved here to be the cook. A year later, Tajima restaurant down the street came up for sale.

Tajima Ramen at Tajima

“I always wanted to be a restaurant owner,” he says. “It was in very bad condition, but that’s why I could afford the opportunity. In the beginning, I tried everything to make the best ramen, but it was too greasy, it was too salty. Eventually, I just tried to make it balanced. I didn’t want to make it too authentic. I wanted to make it for Asian people, Caucasian people, with flavor and umami.”

That may have been the key. Part of the allure of Convoy is the collection of first- and second-generation Asian cooks, adhering to recipes straight from the source. But Morikizono cooked for both palates—where he’s from and where he is. That’s why their spicy sesame ramen—essentially a riff on the classic tantanmen ramen, which itself is a riff on Sichuan dan dan noodles—is an eminently enjoyable bowl of soup.

Twenty years later, Morizikono is still here, and Tajima is revered as one of the region’s best ramen restaurants. The day they opened their sixth San Diego location in College Heights (there are also two in Tijuana) had the bad luck to be the same day the city first shuttered indoor dining.

Morikizono says they’re doing okay. They’ve figured it out as well they can—outdoor dining, to-go orders, Tajima’s long-earned name.

Bing Haus Coffee and Dessert

It might be tucked into a corner of a strip mall, but just look for their big electric sign and you can’t miss it. This cozy little spot serves coffee and frozen desserts, including rolled ice cream, soft serve, OB Beans coffee, and melon bingsoo, a popular Korean shaved ice dessert. Get ready to be one of those people who takes pictures of their food, because you won’t be able to resist capturing their watermelon bingsoo, served with snow ice, condensed milk, fruity pebble cereal, mochi, and vanilla soft serve. Even their rolled ice cream is Instagram worthy; it comes in strawberry, green tea, cookies and cream, banana, black sesame, coffee, Thai tea, and cereal.

4425 Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa | 858-276-9479

Common Theory

When Common Theory says fusion, they mean it, with a menu featuring elements of Korean, Chinese, Mexican, and American cuisines. The Convoy Pork and Shrimp Katsu burger, featured on an episode of Food Network’s Burgers, Brew & ’Que, is a must-try—a fried pork and shrimp patty with pickled onions, butter lettuce, mustard spread, and radish aioli on a brioche bun. Other favorites recently brought back to the menu include the barbecue chicken flatbread and bulgogi rice bowl. While they offer a rotating selection of over 30 craft beers on tap at one time, change things up by participating in their weekly Brew Battle, where two breweries go head-to-head to survive another week on the leaderboard. Right there on the patio, you and your friends can grab a flight consisting of two beers by each brewery in matching styles, blind-test each, and vote for your favorite, labeled A, B, C, and D.

4805 Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa | 858-384-7974

Cross Street Chicken and Beer

Stand aside, Colonel; there’s a new “KFC” in town—the Korean fried chicken at Cross Street. You can never go wrong with the soy garlic wings, a classic Korean duo, but their seasonal garlic butter honey flavor is so popular, they’re thinking of adding it to the menu. If you’re in the mood for spicy, the Seoul Spicy is a house favorite, with a sauce inspired by the Korean home staple gochujang, a red chili paste. Stay awhile in their patio or additional outdoor seating and enjoy a full or half order of wings, boneless tenders, or drumsticks and pair it with your choice from a variety of draft beers.

4403 Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa | 858-430-6001

Dumpling Inn and Shanghai Saloon

This family-owned and operated business is known for being one of the first restaurants in San Diego to offer freshly made xiao long bao, a Chinese soup dumpling. Dumpling Inn also remains dedicated to serving classic Chinese comfort cuisine, such as ma po tofu, honey shrimp, and pork pot stickers. Their extensive parking lot patio can be enjoyed all the more with a cold beer or cocktail.

4625 Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa | 858-268-9638

Friend’s House Korean

This restaurant serves more traditional Korean meals, like their popular soondubu, a spicy Korean tofu soup with egg and a choice of seafood, pork, beef, or kimchi. If you want it even spicier, one of their top menu items is the kimchi jjigae, a spicy kimchi soup with pork, veggies, and sliced tofu. Choose one of five different spice levels to really test how much you can handle. Cool off from your meal in the cozy outdoor patio enclosed by plants galore.

4647 Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa | 858-292-0499

Kura Revolving Sushi Bar

While you may not get to experience the joy of having your food announced in Japanese before seeing it launched to your table on a conveyor belt, Kura’s $2.80 sushi plates—spanning an assortment of salmon, beef, shrimp, eel, scallop, and tuna nigiri, as well as various rolls, hand rolls, and gunkan—are still worth dining outside for. Choose from a selection of over 140 dishes in their extended parking lot patio just out front. Each sushi dish is covered with a plastic top for safety, so the joy of eating good sushi will still be there, even if it’s brought out by a human and not a machine.

4609 Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa | 858-715-4605

Manna BBQ

Manna BBQ is one of Convoy’s most popular all-you-can-eat Korean barbecues. With outdoor seating right out front, you can cook your meat on an electric grill and watch the hustle and bustle of the neighborhood go by. Choose between the pricier A1 set, which has premium meats at $29 per person, and the standard A2 set at $25 per person. Both offer classic menu items like the chadol baegi (beef brisket), bulgogi, and pork belly, as well as sides like gaeran jjim (steamed egg), corn cheese, and thick rice paper.

4428 Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa | 858-278-3300

Olleh Convoy Korean BBQ

See for yourself if Olleh really is the “best Korean BBQ in San Diego.” At $21 per person for lunch and $25 per person for dinner, this all-you-can-eat restaurant offers quite a few marinated options for each type of meat—beef belly, pork belly, brisket, barbecue chicken, bulgogi, and kalbi. Leave just a little room for their popular unlimited sides, like the steamed egg, japchae (stir-fried glass noodles), and kimchi fried rice. Aside from a wide variety of meats and sides and the free shaved-ice dessert, Olleh has a decent-size parking lot, which is just the cherry on top of any Convoy visit. They’ve switched almost everything to be disposable—plates, bowls, utensils, and even bottled water.

4344 Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa | 858-492-2121

Phuong Trang Restaurant

It may be a little difficult to choose from the more than 100 appetizers, soups, noodle dishes, and main courses on Phuong Trang’s astonishingly large menu. But don’t be put off: Whatever you order, you will still get an authentic Vietnamese dish. The vermicelli noodle bowls—thin rice noodles served cool with shredded lettuce, cucumber, mint, bean sprouts, crushed peanuts, and fish sauce—are one of the most popular orders, and you can add various meats and seafood. You can never go wrong with classics like fried egg rolls and fresh spring rolls filled with pork and shrimp, and both the garlic and glazed wings are popular favorites.

4170 Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa | 858-565-6750

RakiRaki Ramen and Tsukemen

In a new parking-lot setup, RakiRaki has an ample amount of outdoor seating to enjoy your favorite ramen dish in, along with a drink from their selection of local craft beer and sake. If you want a ramen that packs a punch, try their Rikimaru spicy miso tonkotsu ramen, a premium miso tonkotsu broth with noodles, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, a five-spice soy sauce pickled egg, and your choice of organic chicken, chashu (grilled pork), or flame-blistered underbelly. In addition to a wide variety of ramen, RakiRaki serves other authentic Japanese dishes, including tsukemen (dipping noodles), charcoal-fired yakitori, curry, ramen burgers, and specialty sushi rolls.

4646 Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa | 858-573-2400

SomiSomi Soft Serve and Taiyaki

This little shop offers ah-boong, a Korean-inspired dessert with soft serve in a baked, goldfish-shaped waffle cone. They’re not the crunchy cones you get at other ice cream shops. While still crispy, this goldfish cone is softer and chewier, a perfect complement to the creamy goodness of soft serve. Mix and match your soft-serve flavor (milk, ube, black sesame, matcha, or a swirl of two flavors) with your filling (red bean, taro, custard, or Nutella), and top it off with your choice of fruity pebble cereal, Oreo crumbs, rainbow sprinkles, graham crackers, and more. There are a couple of small tables outside, but if you can’t get a table there’s plenty of sidewalk space to spread out on too.

4620 Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa | 858-939-0388

Steamy Piggy

As you make your way down Convoy Street, it’s pretty hard to miss Steamy Piggy’s large wooden signage, with their signature neon pig acting as a beacon for the whole strip. Everything about this place is meant to look good as well as taste good. The modern atmosphere is great for a trendy lunch date, and the vertical garden backdrop on the patio is the perfect photo op. They serve classic dishes from China, Korea, and Japan, including dumplings, bao, rolls, ramen, fried rice, and meat bowls. Their popular dumplings are served fresh every day, but all of their dishes are made for family-style sharing, so don’t stress too much about choosing one thing. And you can’t leave without trying their Kawaii Buns, custard-filled steamed buns in the shape of a little pig. They’re almost too cute to eat. (Almost.)

4681 Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa | 858-492-0401

Tajima

Before diving into a steaming bowl of ramen, start your meal off with their most popular appetizer, the pork gyoza. Then give their house favorite a try, the curry ramen, which comes with an original tonkotsu chicken and pork broth mixed with special spiced curry, egg noodles, half a ramen egg, and your choice of pork or chicken chashu. If you’re thinking of bringing a date, plan for the Tajima Tuesday special: buy one ramen, get one 50 percent off.

4681 Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa | 858-576-7244

Tofu House 

Eui Jong Kim

Tofu House

Their iconic stone-pot-scorched tables have moved outdoors so you can enjoy a nice, piping-hot bowl of tofu soup in the fresh air. Established 1998, what was created to make Korean immigrants feel at home in San Diego with warm and comforting food has grown to become a Convoy staple loved by the community as well as customers from different backgrounds. Be sure to try their iconic tofu soup, like their chef’s special, which comes out hot and bubbling with shrimp, pollack roe, clams, oysters, scallops, and mushrooms in addition to soft tofu. They’re also known for their hot stone crispy rice bowls, which also comes out in a piping-hot stone pot. Pro tip: Don’t ignore that basket of eggs on your table—use the unlimited supply they provide anywhere in the soups, on the hot rice, or as hot meat dip.

4646 Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa | 858-576-6433

Yakyudori, Yakitori Taisho, and Hinotez

The menus at these three Japanese restaurants vary, but all are known for their variety of yakitori—bite-sized grilled chicken skewers made from different parts of the bird, such as the breasts, thighs, skin, liver, and other innards, like chicken heart and gizzard. They also offer other grilled skewers like beef tongue, bacon-wrapped asparagus, and quail egg. If you’re not in the mood for yakitori, Yakyudori and Hinotez offer a variety of ramen and donburi (rice bowl) dishes, while Taisho has some deep-fried options to choose from. Although its yakitori selection is smaller than the other two, Hinotez also features sashimi, sushi rolls, and yakisoba.

4898 Convoy St., Kearny Mesa | 858-268-2888

5185 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., Kearny Mesa | 858-752-0468

7947 Balboa Ave., Kearny Mesa | 858-565-4244

Common Theory

James Tran

Do you know how strong your food math must be to have 700 ramen shops worldwide and your soup still taste this good? Sure you do, because you played Mickey Mouse telephone as a kid. One child said “I like raisins” into your ear, you whispered “I have to pee” into the ear of the next kid, who in turn just screamed incomprehensibly into the dirty void that was the third child’s ear.

Point is, quality control gets exponentially harder with each link in the chain. Recipes are mistranslated, ignored, cheated a little bit for cost, tossed out the window. It’s a miracle one of Ajisen’s satellite ramen shops isn’t just microwaving can after can of Campbell’s chicken noodle and laying pork chashu on top.

In long conversations with one of the city’s most creative restaurateurs, the most surprising thing I learned was his adoration of The Cheesecake Factory. Here was a man who’d made his name on weird design and art and counterculture, and he admired the Old Navy of food. Why? Quality control. To have that big of a menu, and feed that many people on a daily basis across the globe, without quality dovetailing until people are getting divorced over your alfredo, which is for some reason green? That’s a heroic feat of organization, calculus, scale, and managing humans.

Let’s not pretend here. Ajisen is airport ramen—industrialized in every sense of the word. It has barbecue in it. It commits all sorts of crimes that will make ramen purists write angry Yelp poetry (see the “New York Steak Cutlet Ramen”). But purists, while impressive with their strictly segregated food flow charts, are not very fun. So let’s mute their whine-song for a minute. Out of 10 ramen places I’ve tried so far in San Diego, I’d put Ajisen’s “Best Combo” near the top.

Here’s why: meat. Whereas most ramen broths are creamy, salty, with a subtle animal flavor, their Ajisen Best Combo Ramen tastes of deeply roasted bones, liquefied grill marks, a more basal carnivorism. It is the ramen for those people who like a little pepperoni with their sausage with their soppressata. It’s loaded with sliced pork and collagen-filled barbecue pork, more pork, a bit of pork. It is my nine-year-old’s favorite, though admittedly I’m not sure that’s the target demo Ajisen is shooting for. She’s right, though. And she doesn’t “do soup,” especially not soups with mushroom strips and big, luscious chunks of swine.

It must be noted, my reticence to even include Ajisen in my citywide vision quest for the best ramen. It has never been more important to support our small, independent restaurants. Our local mom and pops are suffering, big-time. But to ignore a chain in a true search through the city’s ramen inventory feels a bit pretentious, and methodologically flawed.

Plus, let’s not pretend that we don’t occasionally find ourselves facedown in a Double-Double, or that we don’t occasionally walk out onto our porch in a Gap T-shirt, sipping coffee from a Target mug, searching groggily for today’s Amazon joy. But most importantly, let’s not pretend chains and franchises have no ties to local culture. Almost every one of the locations represents a serious investment by the woman or man or family running them. The man in the mask behind the Plexiglas who politely handled my transaction did not fly in on the Ajisen corporate jet for the day to collect the San Diego money. He lives here. And the ramen he hands to people is good.

Ajisen

7398 Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, Convoy

Ramen / Yakyudori Ramen and Yakitori

My CRV smells of ramen and it’s an improvement. I’m sitting in the back of my yawned-open hatchback along Convoy Street, slurping tonkotsu from a to-go container. This is COVID-19 dining for one. I’m thinking about how we have become restaurant sluts. I would never shame someone for their ravenously diversified romantic excursions. Life is short; sex as you please. I do, however, think it’s a bit of a bummer that we’re such restaurant floozies.

We have become a culture of hot, new, youngest things, trading one new trophy restaurant for the next, speaking highly of old favorites in the way we talk about high school sweethearts. (“Oh man, haven’t thought about them in years—what a sweet and confused restaurant, I hope it’s happy and doing well.”)

Which brings me to one of my favorite ramen shops in San Diego: Yakyudori Ramen and Yakitori.

Ten years ago, Yakyudori was the hot new young ramen of choice for San Diego’s top chefs. It had a workmanlike, sweaty, vaguely smoky late-night vibe. It enthusiastically supported the wee-hour drinking arts. It was the Casbah of ramen joints. (For those of you not up on the indie rock scene, The Casbah is our city’s beloved, beer-stained, dark-arts box of righteous new music—tiny but mighty.)

Actually, ramen was secondary to the yakitori. There weren’t many spots in San Diego doing real yakitori—traditional Japanese grilling, using binchotan coals. Japanese chefs love this coal, which is more tightly packed, burning slow and clean and not overwhelming the meats. Yakyudori grills all sorts of meats people around here would consider weird because they’re people around here and not people around Tokyo: cow tongue, chicken hearts, the parts. They are simple-delicious, affordable, and can give unversed Americans that exploratory food thrill that Andrew Zimmern built a career off of. They often top them with the dried bonito flakes, which are so Bible-paper thin they wriggle in the air currents, looking quite alive. What a grotesquely beautiful trick.

Anyway, in my hunt for the city’s best ramen, there are far newer, hyped joints now. San Diego’s ramen scene has caught fire. But I refuse to disown my elders. So last night I tried three different ramen joints along our Asian foodway, the Convoy area. Two of them have far more Instagram tags. And I’m so glad to say that Yakyudori was my favorite.

Their version of tonkotsu doesn’t take bold, postmodern risks in the ramen arts. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles newer craft ramen places have (no kimchi, no gooey bricks of pork belly, no small-batch soy sauce stored in barrels made from Akira Kurosawa’s old furniture). In fact, the very simplicity is what makes Yakyudori’s ramen stick out—a warm, flavorful broth made of chicken, pork, fish, and vegetables—a creamy chicken-ish soup that gets a flavor boost from the fish (though you can’t taste the fish, which I’m glad for, you know that’s where it gets its umami oomph). Breakfast-yellow noodles, crinkly like tons of tiny straws some child bent and ruined, a single round of pork chashu roasted at high heat for a char, then braised.

As ramen explodes in San Diego and across the country because it is one of the greatest comfort foods ever invented and helped latchkey children of the ’80s stay alive—it’s become more and more complicated, ingredients piling on top of other ingredients, a mother lode of chefy things in the bowl.

And then there’s this, Yakyudori’s simple ramen song, a tradition honored and un-mussed.

Yakyudori Ramen and Yakitori

4898 Convoy Street, Kearny Mesa