Kaze Ramen

Pretty fair-​got the Tonkotsu and the ramen good, but not the best. I expected a bit more meat for what I paid, and the broth was alright. If anything stood out in the bowl, it was the half-​egg-​the yolk’s texture was just right-​just firm enough to not spill everywhere, but still soft enough to be creamy. The noodles themselves were firm and decent, but the rest of the bowl didn’t really meet the mark. The atmosphere of the restaurant is nice though-​airy, and on Northside.

Favorite Ramen spot in the Bay area. Consistently good. High quality ingredients, good service… clean atmosphere.

I will never dine here again. As a ramen lover, my boyfriend and I decided to dine here while in Berkeley and we both ordered the Tonkatsu ramen. At first, everything seemed okay, waitresses were trying and everything was a bit slow but it all sort of went downhill from there. After I got my ramen, it seemed like the ramen was made, left out, forgotten about, then served to us. The broth was watery and salty. The service was horrible. Because of the saltiness of the broth I was drinking tons of water. However they never refilled my water even though I asked them twice. I ended up getting up and grabbing the water jug myself and the only thing the waitress had to say was you are not allowed back here. Well, I wouldn’t have gone over there if you had just refilled my water in the first place. Hopefully anyone else who comes here has a better experience if you dare try I guess.

Delicious ramen and yummy appetizers. The food comes out hot and fast and the staff is very friendly. The broth is super flavorful and thick and the noodles are nice and chewy. The dining area itself is a little small, so I don’t know how they manage for larger parties. There’s a parking lot not too far from the restaurant. Overall, great experience.

As a ramen lover, this place satisfies the craving, but it’s not the best. I’ve tried the tonkotsu and black garlic oil ramen multiple times but they always end up being too salty half way through. However, a few sips of water does the trick or pairing the order with some sushi rolls work as well.
The noodles are well-​cooked, just the perfect amount of chewy. The egg and bamboo shoots are decent as well. However, I feel like the price is a bit high and I could find a more decent ramen elsewhere.

Let me preface this by saying all of my prior ramen experiences had been dehydrated (i.e. Cup Noodle, instant lunch, top ramen) and I am definitely a fan. But maybe it was silly to think my simple American self would like traditional ramen.
I went to this restaurant with my best friend who is a fellow foodie. When she found out I had never tried real ramen, she immediately jumped into the Unilocalosphere and this place came up. She was surprised there weren’t more ramen places in Berkeley, and this one had the best reviews.
I guess I’ll be going to another city for ramen because this place was terrible! The service was a joke. The waitress looked so depressed and was incredibly rude. Plus, she would disappear for long periods of time every time she left our table, and more times than not had forgotten what we’d asked for. I am a GOOD TIPPER fellow Unilocalers! That is something I care about A LOT, because I work in service too. I left $ 2 on a $ 35 bill. This girl needs to be put in check ASAP. It wasn’t even busy.
And then the food! The shrimp tempura appetizer was actually very good. I really can’t say anything bad about it. But the ramen was bland and anticlimactic. I got the vegetarian option which I realize may have less flavor than some meat options anyway, but I don’t like pork too much. Plus, I tasted my friend’s pork ramen and it wasn’t so good either. She said it was disappointing which reassures me that despite my lack of ramen knowledge, I am correct in saying this place is crap.
Oh god, and don’t order the iced tea! It’s like a pinch of matcha powder swirled into ice water. tastes like drinking lightly flavored chalk water.

Apparently this is one of few ramen shops (if not, the only) in Berkeley and I feel really bad for those that live there. Everything here was BLEH. I ordered the Combo with Tonkotsu with California rolls. Man, was I disappointed. They charged me $ 2 for 4 TINY pieces of California rolls? Are you kidding me? They were also poorly made…
My friend doesn’t eat pork and everything on the menu has pork on it besides the chicken katsu ramen (which also happens to be the most expensive thing on the menu…). Not a good place for Vegetarians.
My Tonkotsu broth just tasted watery with barely any flavor in it. The ramen wasn’t that great either. I was pretty disappointed in the ramen here compared to what we have in the South Bay.
Lastly, the service was meh. had to ask a few times to get our waters refilled. What pissed me off the most was that when we were about to leave, there were 4 people standing around our table (apparently trying to sit with friends that were nearby, and the seating is limited). Instead of having them wait in the front, the servers let them just stand there. I literally almost got trapped at the table because I could not get out. Finally, after I got out of the crowd, the 4 people quickly just swooped our table. They need to control their customers a little better.
Overall, I was not satisfied with this place at all. I will not be back unfortunately. Hopefully they can improve in the future.

I’ll give this Ramen shop another go and I would have to say that everything went smooth. The Tonkotsu broth has way more flavor now and has tons of brothy goodness. First sip of that broth just took me back to a ramen shop in Japan. Nothing major changed, the marinated egg and chashu were the same… delicious! The noodle is a lot firmer now and has more resistance when you bite on it which is what you want in a good noddle.
Don’t mind the service, really don’t mind it. This is way better than Shiba Ramen in the Public Market in Emeryville. As close to Japan Ramen shop as you can get.
One other thing, this is a Ramen shop, not a Japanese restaurant… yes it’s Ramen, yes it’s Japanese… but man don’t look for bento or tempura or teriyaki beef this place ain’t that. This is strictly Ramen with some side order offerings, I like how they focus on the ramen and the broth. That’s what you should look for in a Ramen shop.

Left unimpressed and unhappy! My friend and I visited this place on a weekend. There were only one or two other customers there yet the service was bad. I had to ask for water several times and they didn’t seem too friendly about it. We asked for our check and it took a long time for us to receive it even though the server was just sitting at the table and watching us. It took much longer than necessary and they didn’t check up on us once throughout the meal.
We ordered tonkatsu ramen and a california roll. The roll was definitely not fresh and lacked enough avocado. The ramen was average: two slices of meat, half an egg, and a very salty piece of seaweed. The prices ranged from 9 – 11 $ which wasn’t too bad. Not the worst I’ve ever had but we won’t be returning due to the poor service and average taste.

So I am soooo happy I found this place!
After spending 10 days in NYC and eating Ramen almost daily I become beyond addicted and needed a local fix. After looking at some Unilocal places I picked this one. Glad I did.
Service is really good here, as in friendly. The place gets pretty so you have to sometimes ask for something twice, but im okay with that as the staff is friendly and apologizes if they forget.
Ramen…I asked for a picture menu because I like to visualize which one I am getting, and I picked the black garlic oil Pork one. Super good, rich broth, tender Pork, crispy bits on top and I added the spicy bomb. which was only med spicy. My friend had the chicken katsu ramen and he really liked his as well. The noodles are cooked to perfection and they even offer the ramen in a copy so you can add sushi, pot sticker or misc items.
I will for sure be back… even with the horrible parking… because it’s just that good!

«Not impressed» as Mckayla Maroney’s face would have it.
Service: it was unfriendly from the start and we had to keep going up to the counter to request for things. For instance, we weren’t given water until we asked for it when the table across the room was given one upon having seated. There was hardly anyone in the restaurant. In fact, two other tables were occupied.
Food: I liked the tonkatsu that we ordered. It was a lot of food— enough for two. The broth was tasty and not too salty. I didn’t care for the noodles though. It looked like cup-​of-​noodles ramen. The ramen is certainly not the best I’ve had. Although, to be fair, I’ve had ramen in the San Mateo and Santa Clara areas. San Mateo has to be ramen capital of the bay area, so it would not be a fair comparison.
That being said, I still expected more from this place considering there aren’t very many ramen places in Berkeley. They need to step it up! When they do, I may consider giving it a second chance.

I don’t always eat ramen in Berkeley, but when I do… It’s at Kaze.
I’ve tried their miso, tonkotsu, and vegetarian ramen, and they’re all really good! The broth is super rich and flavorful, but it can get a little salty towards the end.
The portion size is good, but I usually get the combo with either gyoza or a California roll, and that’s perfectly filling for me. I feel like if I only got ramen, I would feel a little below satisfied.
I just had to take a star off for service. They’re very nice, but it takes a while to take orders and bring out food. I don’t think they’re understaffed necessarily, but the servers tend to focus on only one table at a time.

I’d call this ramen place average at best. The price is right, but it’s nothing special.
The service wasn’t particularly good or friendly. I don’t eat meat, and so I asked the waitress if she could substitute meat for mushrooms. She refused to do so, and said she would take out the meat, but we’d have to pay extra to add mushrooms. Normally restaurants will accommodate, but they even asked a manager that said no as well.
My Japanese boyfriend got the black garlic oil, and said it was tasty, but nothing special. Personally, I liked the texture of the noodles, and the fact that they have a vegetarian broth option. We tried their California roll, and it tasted as though it had probably been made several hours before.

Worst customer service I’ve ever encountered! My friend found a piece of hair in her food and the waitress/​owner insisted that it was a piece of string. The owner was so outraged that my friend would even insinuate that it was a piece of hair and instead of offering to remake the dish or refund the meal, she offered to flip the egg over so that the «string» was not visible anymore. When I asked to see the «string» she used to cook with, it was clearly white and not black like the hair. She kept leaving every time my friend wanted to discuss her dish. In the end, we stopped arguing with her because she was really angry that we even had the audacity to question her. The customer service was terrible and highly unprofessional!

I’d give this place a solid 3 ½ stars, but rounding down because their service isn’t always the best.
I came here for the first time with my dad, based on his recommendation. My dad is quite into ramen and lives in Japan, so I think his opinion is pretty good. Since then, I have come multiple times with friends.
Out of the ramen places near the Berkeley campus, this is probably the best one. Their black garlic oil ramen is one of my favorites and has nice flavoring and the ramen is also a good texture. The tonkatsu ramen is sometimes a hit or miss, sometimes it’s really good, other times it’s too salty for my taste. Usually I stick to the garlic oil ramen and I leave with a full and happy stomach. I’ve also had their takoyaki and gyoza which were both not bad.

I recently came here with my friend on a Monday night hoping to have a good first ramen experience. She has had ramen many times, but I had never had real ramen, and had been wanting to try it for awhile. One of the main things that attracted me to this restaurant is that you could add garlic oil pods to your ramen, which sounded absolutely delicious. We were horribly wrong.
We started off by ordering some rolls and gyoza, and then each got a black garlic oil ramen combo with california rolls. Now it’s not that the food was horrible, but it definitely lacked one main attribute: FLAVOR! Everything tasted extremely bland and plain, which is extremely BORING. We asked for hot sauce to try to spice things up, but the only thing our waitress could offer us was this tiny jar of chili powder which you either had to shake for 20 minutes or unscrew the top to get any out. After adding tons of soy sauce and chili powder to our ramen, we finally were able to get it to an edible taste level.
I hate to say but the best thing we had here was probably the California rolls, and even then, they were very small and had the tinyest little sliver of avocado in them. It’s likely the world will end before I ever return to Kaze Ramen.

I don’t usually get pissed off when I dine about town, but my experience of Kaze Ramen was maddening. My foodie partner in crime and I came here for a pre-​Christmas treat and to take his ramen virginity. What a mistake. I can’t say that I have been this unsatisfied from a meal in YEARS.
Everything about the food was tragic. From the first to last bite, I felt cheated. The sushi was an abomination. The tuna was not fresh at all and the rolls were falling apart on the plate. The gyoza had a strong taste of vinegar, making the actual meat filling indistinguishable. The black garlic oil ramen itself was the worst I’ve ever had. A truly flavorless broth, an undercooked pile of noodles, a painfully salty egg, rubbery chashu, a soggy sheet of seaweed, and a smattering of black fungus that neither helped or hurt the dish. We beckoned the waitress for hot sauce of any kind and she returned with a chili powder, the only condiment they had. After unscrewing the top of the shaker and dumping half of the contents in my bowl, it still had an off-​putting bitter undertone. It sounds dramatic, but in a town as famous for food as Berkeley, the fact that this place had customers was a great surprise.
Our waitress was soft-​spoken and barely greeted us. In a restaurant with a considerable amount of empty tables, she still put us snugly in between two sets of other diners. She never even mentioned to us that the specials existed.
If you love quality ramen, look far and wide before coming to Kaze.

I love this place for convenience and for good basic ramen. This place doesn’t get so fancy shmancy with ramen, they just give you good traditional Japanese ramen. Don’t quote me, I use the word «traditional» very loosely as I’m not an expert.
Also, this place specializes in Tonkotsu, the super rich pork broth, and also my top pick at any ramen joint. It’s a great spot for a quick meal as it’s very hole-​in-​the-​wall. I got in and out in about 30 mins. Service is very minimal, which is was perfect. When I have ramen cravings in the future, you’ll find me there.

Since my ramen craving was hitting me pretty hard and I didn’t want to drive all the way to San Mateo or San Jose for a bowl of ramen, I was searching for a ramen place near by and found this place in Berkeley.
I have to say the ramen here is okay good and for the price ~$ 9, it’s pretty decent. I got the Kaze Black Garlic Oil ramen level 2 spicy cuz I like it hot, while my dad got the same but not spicy with extra noodles (+$ 2). My ramen noodles are slightly overcooked and my half an egg was little overdone, but my dad’s noodles were cooked al dente and his egg was done perfectly. Not fair! But hey! It was still pretty satisfying I guess. The broth was not too salty either and I really liked their chashu. We also ordered their takoyaki, and they were not hot when arrived. I wouldn’t recommend ordering it.
The service here though was definitely way too slow. We sat down for a good 15 minutes and nobody came around to service us. We had to wave multiple times to get our waitress’ attention so we can order.
Oh well, I guess it was A-​OK for the price and if you ever need to satisfy a ramen craving.

Typical Japanese ramen. You got to choose the level of spicyness and I usually get the medium one.
Strong flavored soup and decent meat and sauce.