I’ve been on the hunt for the best ramen in Seattle ever since I had a life-changing bowl at a now-defunct restaurant. It’s the ultimate comfort food that originated in Japan centuries ago after a Chinese noodle dish came to the country.
These days there are a ton of different styles ranging from delicate shoyu to earthy miso ramen. Google partnered with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries to produce a robust guide on the history of ramen. In it they explain that while the combination of ingredients is limitless, ramen generally consists of noodles, dashi, sauce, fat or oil, and mix-in ingredients.
Seattle has a lot of Japanese influence thanks to people migrating here in the early 1900s to work at sawmills, fisheries, and canneries. The Japanese community is still a big contributor to Seattle’s present day culture, which is evident by the countless sushi, teriyaki, and ramen shops throughout our city.
If you’re wondering where to get the best ramen in Seattle among the abundance of choices, here’s a rundown of the most authentic and interesting bowls in the city.
8 Best Ramen in Seattle
Save this to Pinterest for later, as I’ll add more ramen places in Seattle once I deem them worthy of this list!
Arashi Ramen
website | neighborhoods: Ballard (get directions) & Tukwila (get directions)
Arashi Ramen is hands down the best of the ramen restaurants on this list. They have two no-frills locations set up to look like a traditional ramen shop with a small counter and a few tables.
What makes their ramen so good is pork bone broth. Master chef Daisuki Ueda simmers it for over 16 hours to develop a complex and deep umami flavor. Pork broth is key to tonkotsu ramen, which is my favorite style, and Arashi’s can’t be beat.
What to order: My go-to dish is the Black Garlic Ramen. The broth is amped up in flavor thanks to a ton of garlic. It’s served with pork belly chashu, seasoned egg, bean sprouts, green and fried onion, and black garlic oil. It all makes a pleasing cacophony of textures in a bowl.
Midnite Ramen
website | neighborhood: Wallingford (get directions)
Midnite Ramen is one of the more authentic ramen spots in Seattle. It started in a “yatai”, or ramen food cart popularized in the early 1900s in Japan. These carts often serve between sunset and dawn, so they’re known as “yonakisoba”, or midnight ramen joints.
Chef Elmer Komagata grew up in Tokyo during the height of “yatai”. He’s since moved Midnite Ramen into a brick and mortar location, but he still makes a limited number of ramen a night and a few other specials, leveraging his years of culinary training in France. And let me tell you, you can taste that training in every bowl.
What to order: Don’t miss the Kobe Beef Brisket Shoyu Ramen. The broth is deeply flavored and the beef is so moist it falls apart. I love the slight smokey sweetness the brisket adds to this dish, and the quality of meat can’t be understated. You can also order it on a bao to get a better sense of the texture and flavor without the broth.
Another winning dish is the One-Bite Chicken. While tiny and not always available, it has the most refreshing green onion and scallion puree that tastes like spring in your mouth. It’s a welcoming flavor to cut all the richness of the ramen, so grab a morsel or two to enjoy with your soup!
Betsutenjin Ramen
website | neighborhood: Capitol Hill (get directions)
Betsutenjin is another one of the more authentic shops on this list of the best ramen in Seattle. It’s a hole-in-the wall that’s only obvious by the line of people waiting outside to get seats or takeout. Inside you’ll find a few seats along a bar with privacy curtains and booths with high walls. The ambiance whisks you to the streets of Tokyo, especially with it’s late night culture since Betsutenjin stays open late, and I’m here for it.
They focus on Hakata-style ramen that originated in southern Japan. Also called tonkotsu, this style is known for being silky smooth thanks to simmering pork bones for hours. Some ramen restaurants try to mimic this silk appearance and texture by adding milk or MSG, but Betsutenjin doesn’t.
Instead they use a patented pressure pot to prepare their broth over more than 8 hours. They use special-cut pork bones to help impart their signature meaty flavor.
They also serve it with seared cha-siu pork. I love the extra flavor from the char, but know that the meat is a thicker cut. I prefer fattier, thinner slices so it’s easier to bite into, but there’s no denying Betsutenjin is making one of the best ramens in Seattle.
What to order: Get the original Hakata Style Ramen to experience some of the most meaty, salty, and all-around delicious pork bone broth in the city. Just don’t forget to add an egg. It has the most perfectly jammy yolk. I always order two so I can try to understand how they manage to get an egg to taste that pronounced.
Yoroshiku
website | neighborhood: Wallingford (get directions)
Yoroshiku is a hidden gem tucked inside the same building as Secret Fort and Indigo Cow, some of the best ice cream in Seattle.
It’s the brainchild of owner Keisuke Kobayashi, his culinary friend Koichi Homma, and his wife Yoshie. Chef Keisuke was born and raised in Hokkaido. He came to Seattle for school and decided he wanted to stay and share the dishes from his hometown.
Since the start of that dream, Keisuke has been able to expand Yoroshiku into a broader ramen restaurant with dishes like bao and fried chicken. However, ramen is still a staple of the menu.
Yoroshiku specializes in shoyu ramen. This style features chicken broth instead of pork, which results in a more delicate and less cloudy base. Admittedly I prefer the fattier tonkotsu style, so I was dubious if I’d consider this one of the best ramen shops in Seattle.
Well as you probably guessed, I loved it. Yoroshiku’s broth is just as deeply flavored as pork broth, but with a more subtle, yet still complex umami flavor. The lack of that fatty mouth feel made the ramen feel lighter, almost like the best chicken noodle soup broth you’ve ever had amped up in both a deeper color and taste.
The pork chashu is also quite good at Yoroshiku. That porky fat flavor goes beautifully with the broth and soft-boiled egg. Overall, Yoroshiku is making a mean, underrated bowl of ramen.
What to order: Get the Shoyu Ramen. It has a soy sauce-based broth that really lets you taste the quality of the broth.
Another standout is the Zangi Hokkaido-Style Fried Chicken. It exceeded expectations because somehow they were able to make white meat extra juicy. The breading had great flavor and the dish was perfectly seasoned. I also loved the yuzu spicy sauce for dipping.
Kizuki Ramen & Izakaya
website | neighborhoods: various throughout Seattle, the Eastside, and the rest of the US (find locations)
Kizuki has an interesting story that bridges both Japan and the greater Seattle area. It was started by Brandon Ting who came to the US from Taiwan to attend Bellevue College. His friends turned him onto ramen after a trip to Vancouver, which triggered an obsession with opening up the best ramen shop in Seattle.
According to his interview with Bellevue College, he reached out to a bunch of Japanese chains to see if any would be interested in partnering with him. Only one responded, but that’s all he and his friends needed to jump start their empire. Now they have locations all over Seattle and the United States.
Typically I’m dubious of chains, but Kizuki doesn’t skimp on the details. They honor authentic cooking methods like roasting bones before boiling to impart more flavor, despite it taking longer. Whenever they open a new US location, they have their designers fly to Japan so they can better evoke every detail of the Japanese experience into their spaces. This results in one of the fancier ramen restaurants in Seattle.
Food wise, the ramen here is a flavorful fat bomb coating your mouth in the best possible way. The broth is deeply flavored and well seasoned. Each egg is perfectly cooked, and they have slightly thicker noodles to provide more chew. I also loved how our bowls had chili slices to impart an unexpected dose of heat.
They also think about texture in ways other ramen spots in Seattle don’t. For example, I usually hate those fibrous mushrooms traditionally found in ramen. Kizuki marinades them in a soy sauce to soften them and add more flavor.
What to order: Get the Garlic Tonkotsu. It’s pronounced in favor, but doesn’t overpower the silky broth so you can really appreciate its depth of flavor.
Ramen Danbo
website | neighborhood: Capitol Hill (get directions)
Ramen Danbo is another well-loved spot that many consider the best ramen in Seattle. It’s a Japanese chain that first came to North America via the Vancouver, BC restaurant scene. You can now find locations in Seattle and New York.
They focus on Kyushu Hakata-style, or tonkotsu, ramen like a lot of other spots on this list. I personally found other Seattle ramen shop broths more flavorful, but there’s no denying Ramen Danbo’s version is quite good.
One aspect of their ramen that stands out is the noodles. They serve a unique style that’s thinner than many other Seattle ramen restaurants. The team worked with local artisans to experiment with the water-to-flour ratio in order to find the perfect consistency and size to complement their broth.
What to order: Their Classic Chashu-men is the pro move. It has chashu in their signature tonkotsu broth. Most places include the pork belly in their base ramen, so don’t make the rookie mistake of getting the base option at Ramen Danbo or you’ll be disappointed!
OOINK Ramen
website | neighborhoods: Capitol Hill (get directions) & Fremont (get directions)
OOINK Ramen is another spot that many people consider the best ramen in Seattle. They create broths in the traditional Japanese method, but give it a modern twist.
For example, you can find options like spicy mala ramen or garlicky kotteri ramen. There are also sometimes novelty bowls like mapo tofu ramen that marry classic flavors from different cultures into one interesting dish.
What to order: If you don’t like super spicy like me, get the Kotteri Ramen. I personally found the shoyu option I ordered too delicate and lacking seasoning, but the garlic ramen had good flavor. It’s served with crispy garlic that adds an addictive crunch you don’t often get in ramen.
Another interesting difference at OOINK is the pork. It’s cut thicker, almost like a roast pork versus a thinly sliced chashu style you’d see at other ramen spots. Yet it is tender enough to be cut with a spoon. I really dug this mind bend when I tried it and think you will, too.
Ashiya
website | neighborhood: Lynnwood (get directions)
Consider Ashiya a bonus to this list of the best ramen in Seattle since it’s technically located north of the city. However, I enjoyed their ramens so much I thought you should know about them.
Ashiya is a small, unassuming Japanese restaurant in a strip mall. You’ll find all kinds of dishes like udon, Japanese curry, and yakisoba. Their soups really shine with complex broths and technical execution you wouldn’t expect from such a casual spot.
What to order: Get the Tonkotsu Pork Ramen. The pork is cut thick similar to OOINK, but is fattier to impart even more flavor.
Another winner is the Beef Udon. At first I thought the broth was a bit too sweet, but I couldn’t stop eating it. The mushrooms in particular sopped up the brothy goodness. I also loved the chewiness of the udon and how they served it with spinach to balance the sweetness.
Other Seattle restaurants to visit
After you make your way through this list of the best ramen in Seattle, check out my other guides to eating around the city.
- Seattle’s Best Sushi at Every Price Range
- My Favorite Soups in Seattle
- The Freshest Poke in Seattle
- Comfort Food in Seattle to Try Now
- Best Cheap Eats in Seattle
