Ramen Shop
Three Chez Panisse alumni opened this in 2012 and kept their old kitchen's habit: the noodle menu runs off whatever the season has. Benjamin Seto found the noodles firmer with more give in 2015, and credited a second noodle machine from Japan.
Why go
Jerry Jaksich, Sam White and Rayneil De Guzman came out of Alice Waters' dining room and put a seasonal ramen bar on College Avenue.3 Seto wrote it up for Berkeleyside in 2015: It's been a while since I've eaten at Ramen Shop and it seems like the noodles have improved in texture, with give yet still firm.
He writes the Bay Area food blog Focus:Snap:Eat, and Berkeleyside ran the piece. His shio that night was roasted sand dabs, pork chashu, a shoyu-marinated egg, blistered cherry tomatoes, bok choy, scallions and frilly red mustard greens, for $17.50. That is a Chez Panisse plate in a ramen bowl. The drinks get the same attention: a highball section built on whisky and shochu, then eight specialty cocktails.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the shio if the board has it. Seto's was roasted sand dabs, pork chashu, a shoyu egg, blistered cherry tomatoes, bok choy and red mustard greens.3
- Order: a donburi if you want the produce without the broth. Seto's came out like a bibimbap, pulled pork under pickled ginger, kombu, scallions, cranberry beans, peperonata, radishes and a raw Hen Pen Farms egg yolk.3
- Avoid: the bar dumplings, on the only unflattering line I have found. Seto in 2015:
The dumplings had great form but the skin was thick and slightly mushy.
3 That is an old caution, so treat it as one.
What locals & experts say
- Flora Tsapovsky, in Eater's 38 essential East Bay restaurants, July 2025:
Ramen Shop has served slurpable bowls of Ramen on College Avenue for over a decade, and it only continues to get better.
2 - Michael Bauer put the room on the Chronicle's Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants in 2017.1
- East Bay Express readers voted it Best Ramen in the paper's 2021 poll.4
Good to know
- Booking: Resy, and dinner only.5 In 2015 this was a no-reservations room with a crowd standing in the front bar, and old advice still says so.3
- For a group: there is a hidden dining room for two to eight, at $50 an hour, with karaoke in it. You email the room to book it.5
Verdict
should-visit — Three cooks left the Chez Panisse dining room in 2012 and have run this one off the season ever since. Book a counter seat, and if the shio with sand dabs is up take that; nobody has reviewed the kitchen since 2015, so you are forming your own opinion.