Uchiwa Ramen

Modern interiors n tasty broth
The service is great n they are very attentive and quick.
Could do better with a full egg instead of half with the ramen and more flavor of the egg

Excellent food, GREAT staff, and fast service! We’ll be back probably this week! You can get adds to your ramen which is great. Appetizers were very good too. Great location, parking in front of nearby parking garage. Near the freeway too.

Delicious Ramen with all the different choices for flavoring (Salt, soy sauce, miso, or pork ball). Friendly staff and owners, who are two Chinese brothers. My only complaint about the ramen is that they don’t give you enough broth. I love ramen for the broth so I wanted more but you have to pay extra. Also, the price is a little more than you pay for ramen in SF or the East Bay and especially more than I paid in Japan, but that’s to be expected in San Rafael

SOOOO GOOD. So good I had to use ALL CAPS JUST LIKE MY MOTHER. Broth is really layered and complex. The little add-​ons (black garlic, etc) just make the flavors just a little bit varied and I like to switch things up a bit. Ramen has a perfect «bite». Portions are pretty substantial. I usual order «extra noodles» and can only eat ½ of the soup. Then because I ordered extra noodles, I get to have lots of leftovers for lunch. The «fries» are ridiculously good and if you don’t get them you have just missed out on the best thing since fried pickles and tequila. Fries and Ramen, you say? Yes. Yes. Yes. Trust me when I tell you they are unlike anything you’ve ever eaten.
Oh great, now I want this for dinner tonight.

Heard about Uchiwa by word of mouth. We eat there and do take out regularly. The staff is great, the service is quick. The soups are TASTY!!! We can’t reproduce this at home, we’ve tried! Best ramen place in Marin, in our opinion.

When I’m craving ramen, this is my spot. Most times I don’t feel like driving across the bridge to get vegan ramen. I love knowing I have a great option 10 minutes away from me. Seriously, their vegan ramen is the bees knees and I always pair it with a tall Sapporo. I leave stuffed! I seem to come at a great time when I’ve dined here, as I’ve never experienced a wait time. Their servers are friendly, attentive, and fast! Looking forward to my next visit.

I had lunch there this week and I’m not impressed. The food portions are tiny and the prices are high. The flavor was weak and I was still hungry after I felt. I felt very gypped! The staff wasn’t attentive and they close at 2… which is odd.
I had the chicken special and they chicken tasted off like it had dirt. All it had was breaded chicken and rice with a tiny side of curry sauce. It wasn’t good.
This isn’t a good lunch place.

I don’t recommend this place if your taste buds require high expectations.
Sadly, ramen lacking flavor & presentation. Noodles aren’t freshly made.
Don’t eat here, drive to the city for better quality Ramen!

My first time here was opening day over a year ago and it was a 110 degree day and their air conditioner was not working but the staff was super hyped about being open and the appetizers, teriyaki chicken legs and gyoza, and Ramen were good.
Then I came back a couple months later a the staff was still great but the food not so much; the appetizers, gyoza and the steak kabobs, were burnt and dried out and the Ramen was bland and tasteless.
This time the staff was OK but the food was much better; the steak kabob appetizer was OK cooked well and Suttle flavor and the Ramen was delicious: tasty broth, 2 pieces of the pork, half an egg, sheds if mushroom, bamboo shoots, sprouts.
You enter through a large, 12 foot, dark wooden door. The atmosphere here is friendly and the architecture and decorations are interesting. There are tables, high bench bar stool seating facing the B street window or each other at a high table, and low bar seating facing the kitchen.

I had a great experience!!! Food was fantastic, restaurant was very nice and the staff was amazing! Jacob is a talented chef and very personable! I will definitely be coming back!

The vegetarian miso bowl is really awesome. I love the décor and how there is creativity in the menu. They also have kombucha on draft!
I love eating at places where the owners take such care in perfecting their passion and sourcing the best ingredients.

Service was quick and the waitresses were super nice. The restaurant is very nice and modern…
I really really really wanted to like this place. The ramen was not good. Nothing personal, it was bland and below mediocre. I only ate the ramen so I can’t comment on anything else on the menu. I’ll have to travel over the GGB to enjoy some good ramen. Bad bad bad ramen. Please fix the ramen and I’ll try again.
#marinproblems

This review is strictly based on the ramen. Service was attentive and they kept the water filled. First off, suuuuuper expensive CHINESE ramen! Got a bowl of their Tonkotsu ramen and a side of karaage and my total comes to $ 20.43! $ 23.43 with tip! Guess they have to recoup the cost for all fancy décor and hipster style design. If you add extra toppings and my bill would’ve easily sailed past $ 30. LoL, $ 30 for wheat flour, chopped up veges and 2 slices of pork, ingredients that cost at most $ 2 per bowl to make, what’s left is the soup and it failed miserably. #1 most important ingredient when it comes to making a bowl of ramen is soup, everything else comes second.
About the the ramen… sigh…this is not Tonkotsu broth guys. A quick google image search for Tonkotsu broth and your broth looks nothing like it, let alone taste. This so-​called «broth» reminds me of pork based hotpot broth. If I want my ramen noodles in hotpot broth, I’d go hotpot and order fresh pulled ramen noodles. I came here for Tonkotsu and what I got was some Chinese knock-​off.
You really don’t see Japanese encroaching on Chinese cuisine (mainly because Chinese cuisine has been cannibalized and is viewed as cheap fast food) in the United States and when Chinese encroach on another country’s cuisine, you better get it right or do it better. If not, you’re just adding yourselves to the list of cheap Chinese knock-​offs but the only problem here is your prices aren’t cheap. You charge more than Japanese owned ramen shops like Yamadaya, Mensho, Ramen Hiroshi, Orenchi, Yokohama Iekei, Himawari, Dojo, Shin-​Sen-​Gumi, Daikokuya etc.
Please, go back to the drawing board and learn how to make proper broth. Until you can master making pork bone broth, your ramen, at most, is only $ 6 grade. It is bold of you to have the propensity of ranking your ramen prices higher than properly made Japanese style Ramen.
Oh and instead of talking about yourselves, and your work history which people could care less anyway. Why don’t you talk about the history of ramen instead? Where the word ra-​men came from, how it’s made and how it became a popular dish in Japanese cuisine. That would impress gaijin more than slapping your resume on the menu and talking about your past work experience that is completely unrelated to food.

This place should be better! It’s a stylish, hip looking, place with a very healthy line of foods that have little in the way of distinctive flavors. The idea of having such an urbane place in our hometown is thrilling. The execution was disappointing. The service seemed to be by committee. Therefore, the teamwork leaves you with no-​one in particular focussing in on your dining experience. No-​one was paying attention to the timing of our experience or our overall satisfaction. Yeah, it was quality food, but there was no «there» there. This place should be the talk of the town… it’s so cool that you can hardly see it from the street… very clandestine in a hip sorta way. Ramen is comfort food, and if you do it right it could be high-​end comfort food. Here, it is an just expensive, bland food and experience. I am looking forward to the make-​over so I can put this place on the list of reasons to dine in Marin.

OK, like many reviewers, I want to start off and say that this review is purely based on the ramen itself. The service I got was good and attentive, the location and restaurant itself is clean, looks good, nice and peaceful for enjoying ramen. The only thing missing? Good ramen.
I’ve had plenty of bowls of the stuff over the years, even lived in Japan for a bit, so I know ramen. I know what is amazing, excellent, and pretty good.
For the prices charged at Uchiwa, and the high end look they spent so much on in décor, I expect pretty good at the very least. Unfortunately, the ramen I had was mediocre at best. It was utterly forgettable, and I don’t see myself coming back. Which is a shame, since Marin really needs a great ramen place. Sadly, this isn’t it.
Whoever owns Uchiwa– watch the movie «Tanpopo». Then have a bowl of your ramen. How does it make you feel to eat it? Improve your ramen accordingly, and you will have lines out the door.

Yummy. This was delicious. Hubby had the miso broth and it was better than what I had. Mine was really rich broth. Can’t remember the name. It was advertised as rich but I mistakenly thought I was woman enough to handle it.
I was not.

I ordered the tonkatsu ramen and some spam musubi for pickup.
Service: Really good. My order was ready in 10 minutes, so I pretty much placed my order and headed out the door to get it. The cashier was really friendly and so was the guy who picked up the phone.
Food: The ramen was just okay. The noodles still had some good bounce to them despite them sitting for 5 – 10 minutes before eating. The chasu was really good but there was only one small piece, and I was a little disappointed to see that they only include ½ an unseasoned boiled egg, as opposed to the whole ajitsuke tamago (soy and sake marinated soft boiled eggs — seriously one of my favorite foods) I am used to. It also came with menma (fermented bamboo shoots), mushrooms, mung sprouts, and spinach. The real disappointment for me was the broth. It was porky, but did not have the rich flavor I’ve come to expect from tonkatsu ramen. It also thickened with starch (rather than pork collagen and fat) and didn’t have the same velvety texture as real tonkatsu broth. I also found it underseasoned… not salty and flavorful enough to properly coat the noodles.
My spam musubi were very tasty but let’s be honest, they’re pretty hard to screw up.
Price: Perhaps I’m a little spoiled by the great ramen in the south bay (Orenchi! $ 10.50/bowl) but this did not live up to my expectations. I might go back at $ 7 or $ 8 a bowl, but at $ 12.45 it’s just not worth it.
If you’re a ramen snob, skip it. If you’re just looking for a bowl of noodles with some tasty toppings and don’t mind paying $ 12.50 for it, then it’s worth checking out.

It was my first time here and it was good started but not good ended. Some of food items are great. I enjoyed a lot… Only issue was that the prices of some menu items were different then the final check. I asked our server to check the prices and she just said yes we changed the prices. It was only few dollars but PLEASE CHANGE IT ON THE MENU FIRST INSTEAD OF changed it from the system first.

Yummy. Tonkotsu is great. Fish cakes, Chasu, bean spouts, spinach, and more. Noodles are very tasty and fresh. Added some red pepper flakes. Hot tea was very good. Iced Tea had good flavor. Enjoy curry rice balls. Nice service.

My wife and I felt like some non-​sushi Japanese food for a change, which is surprisingly hard to find, when you want to. So you can imagine our pleasant surprise when we discovered the ~1 year old Uchiwa in San Rafael: first, I don’t think I’ve EVER eaten dinner in SR — there’s nothing really good there — and second, that there should be a new ramen place in SR was especially unlikely. But here it was. And so away we went.
Except that sadly, we won’t be back; not because it’s bad — it isn’t — and not because the service isn’t good — it’s fine, the girl serving us was friendly and attentive, an unusual change from the normally dour and disinterested service that plagues Marin especially — but simply because, as with most things in Marin and most of SF, weirdly, including and especially the really highly rated ones, it was simply what Unilocal describes as «Meh. I’ve experienced better.» To wit, it was neither bad, nor superb, it was simply nothing special.
PRO: ramen in Marin! Pleasant, casual — if a bit cold; both atmospherically but also stylistically — with friendly staff. Decent ramen; nothing special.
CON: nothing was wrong or bad … it was just nothing special.

Excellent across the boards. The tonkatus ramen was delicious, as were the many appetizers I tried including the chicken wings, pork wing, kale salad, uchiwa fries, and chashu tacos. I definitely recommend stopping in for a very high quality meal.

Wonderful spot in downtown San Rafael for some ramen on a cold day. I had the vegetarian miso option. It was very tasty and filling with the noodles tofu and egg. I did not feel like I was lacking protein. The soup was very savory and satisfying. The interior is very modern wooded décor.
Note that the tea is good but not free.

Ramen, broth was good. Noodles nice, had bite left in them, nice. extra side of pork belly (Chasu slow roasted). Enjoyable bowl of Hot Ramen on a cold day, satisfying.
I had the Pork Wing appetizer, that was fall off the bone tender, with a sweet sauce and green onions on top, this was very good. Nice dinner, service was excellent, thank you

Beautiful restaurant, nice staff, great food. Really loved this place, awesome!

This restaurant’s tonkotsu is the best ramen I’ve had in the Bay Area, period. Better than bowls I’ve had in the South Bay or the Inner Richmond. On top of that, the décor is cute and interesting, and the staff has always been friendly and professional. Also, the Uchiwa Fries are an amazing appetizer. (But if you can eat an app AND a full bowl of ramen in one sitting, you might have a tapeworm.)
Shout out to the reviewers who ding this place and say you could get better in Japan: what’s wrong with you?!

I love this place.
First, the ramen is great. The tonkatsu broth is cooked 14 hours and is properly meaty, rich and palate coating. The noodles are perfectly toothsome. The chasu (pork belly) is decadent and satisfying. Add some sprouts, spinach, bamboo shoots, a soft egg, and it’s soup noodle nirvana.
The appetizers are great too. We sampled a few. The chicken wings are really, really good — ooey gooey sweet, sour, spicy — truly finger-​lickin’ good. The pork «wing» is good along the same lines. Kale salad is refreshing, nicely crunchy and with a delightful soy vinaigrette dressing. The Uchiwa fries are good too — potatoes wrapped in spring roll skin and fried to a crisp — served with a Sriracha ketchup and a sesame mayonnaise. The chasu makes another appearance in taco form — rich meat, crunchy slaw, soft corn tortilla to hold it all together — it’s the perfect two bites!
The beverage program is great too. There’s Asahi beer on tap and a selection of Japanese craft beers by the bottle. There’s also wine and sake. Did I mention that the food here begs to be washed down with cold beer?
The atmosphere is rustic and contemporary. Service is friendly and personalized. The owners Kevin and Ben were both there and stopped by to make sure everything was great. I felt like a member of the family!

Visited last night. $ 45 for a small salad and two bowls of ramen, one being vegetarian. With the need for a gluten free bowl you have to pay for meat that isn’t safe for you to eat even though you don’t receive it, then pay $ 1 extra for a half egg to make the soup more filling. You’d think they’d substitute for you. GF Noodles were so-​so and cost $ 2 extra. When I checked to see if the noddles were actually gf, because I get sick eating gluten, the waitress rolled her eyes. I’d also avoid the iced tea, it just wasn’t good. When we asked for sweetener to try and mask the taste, the waitress was super bothered. So not a fun experience.
I’d go somewhere else.

We were overjoyed when we found a ramen shop in Marin. Had to wait for a week to have dinner there, and with our anticipations building, we were … sadly disappointed.
I had Shoyu, my hubby had Tonkotsu. Both broth had more of a Chinese soup flavor. There’s nothing wrong with Chinese soup, but this place is labeled as Japanese ramen shop. That definitely isn’t how a Tonkotsu ramen should taste like. Also a huge disappointment — both bowls had way too little broth. Only one chashu. All of the photos on Unilocal has two, so I think we were shorted.
The Uchiwa Flies appetizer was really good. Also the service was good, also the ambiance…
We intend to give them one more chance though, as I’d love them to succeed as the only ramen shop in Marin!

Ramen has been a trendy food that just never seemed to really call my name until today which happened to be a very cold day in San Rafael. So I set out to go for a warm bowl of ramen and see what its all about.
The Restaurant: Cool modern interior with beautiful tree slabs for the tables.
The Food: To be honest when I think ramen I think Top Ramen or something like that. However as a foodie I embrace all foods and looked forward to what its all about. The broth was good and very salty as expected, the chasu was delicious, the other ingredients were good and the ramen was… well, just that. Ramen. Over all it was just an over priced bowl of good and fresh top ramen. So the food was descent but not good by any stretch.
The Service: I hate complaining about the service but the reality is that when its a sit down establishment its part of the experience. After being told to sit where I want I waited for someone to take my order for 15 min. She then forgot my water till almost the end of the meal. At the end, no one took my credit card, so after waiting around a while I finally just took it up since I had to go.

As excited as I was to find a ramen spot in my new town, my first visit left me disappointed.
The service was slightly awkward. After about 20 – 30 minutes from ordering, our waitress apologized that there was some of miscommunication between herself and the kitchen and they did not get the orders. She mentioned some sort of computer system problem so perhaps they are just phasing into something new here? I honestly didn’t mind the wait because I was enjoying my conversation but I suppose this is something to consider if going during lunchtime on a work day.
I had the Tonkotsu and my fiancé the Miso. Usually I prefer the richer Tonkotsu broth but here I actually liked the lighter, slightly sweet miso broth better as I found mine slightly overpowering in flavor. The egg was almost hard boiled– not the right texture for ramen. Overall, the flavor was utterly disappointing and I was adding spices to try to make up for it.
All in all, it’s a decent place to get some ramen but I wouldn’t go out of my way to travel here. I feel that the emphasis at this shop is really on interior design rather than on the food.

Let’s get this out of the way right at the start: I like this place a little too much. The appetizers are just ridiculously good. I go for the appetizers. Get you some of them appetizers. I hope I’m being clear about this.
The service is excellent. The room is really nice. Uchiwa is so welcome in San Rafael and I’m really glad they are here.
In all fairness, the ramen is not spectacular. It’s okay, though. Certainly not terrible though I don’t know if I could recommend it. But, don’t get me wrong, it would never dissuade me from returning for a good time, great food, and excellent service. Because.
The appetizers.

We had dinner here last night but the signal was weak so I couldn’t check in or write a tip. Probably user error on my part somehow lol.
There weren’t any tables so we sat at the long counter which worked out fine. It is low like a table so you just scoot up on the stool. It was comfortable enough for dinner.
We tried the Cucumber salad it was only $ 1.95 It was small but quite good. The cucumbers were crunchy, which we love love. The vinaigrette was fresh and just enough zing to make it delicious.
We both had Ramen. Shio & Miso. The broth was great which to me makes the Ramen all by itself. The different flavors of our Ramen were really great as well. We were right in front of the kitchen so it was fun seeing how they prepared the different dishes. I had never seen how they treat the individual ramen dishes before. Pretty cool! There were four people in the kitchen all working like crazy. The main chef did come out once to get some ice water and said hi. But he was quite busy so he didn’t have time to stop and chat.
There were also 4 people waiting tables. It got busier when we were there and by the time we left there were people waiting outside. I’d definitely come back to try some of their other dishes.

I was so accustomed to the plethora of Asian food available in San Francisco. After moving to Marin, I was constantly on the hunt for Asian food. There aren’t very many options, and I always find myself longing for any type of noodle soup.
When I found out a new ramen shop had opened up in San Rafael, I dragged the hubby to try it out with me. We’ve had the potstickers, chicken karaage, and the tonkatsu ramen. I wasn’t expecting too much since most of my Asian food experiences in Marin weren’t up to par to San Francisco/​Oakland, but the food was pretty good! You can’t really go wrong with potstickers and karaage. The tonkatsu broth was a little thicker than I’m used to, but it was still delicious. This place definitely helps satisfy my noodle soup craving!

Staff was very friendly. Nice setting to come to on a Friday night. Clean and appealing. First time here after hearing about it. Ordered two ramen bowls. Shoyu And Tonkatsu. The chasu was tasty. Quantity of noodles to broth is good. Though we thought it lacked finish after drinking the broth. The noodles are fresh from south SF.
We found them a bit tough. Maybe a bit longer cooking them. When I asked about the noodles I felt the manager was not to keen where they where from. Thereafter, i thought he might have come to ask us what we thought. But he passed us several times with no word or acknowledgement. When we close to finishing only did the servers asks us about the ramen.