Owned by Chef Maung Htein Linn, who also owns Tabata Ramen, Nippori is a Japanese restaurant located in the heart of Midtown. I should mention that both Tabata and Nippori are train stations from a Tokyo circle line. At Nippori, the Chef crafted a menu that he considers authentically Japanese, serving not only ramen, but also sushi, sashimi, etc. When we arrived, at opening time, the place was not crowded and it took only 15 minutes to start seeing customers arriving to the point where people where waiting for a table.

They have a large dining room with few rooms for small parties, or you can also decide to eat at the bar...

For our lunch, we decided to share few dishes. The first one was pork gyoza that were juicy with a thin enough shell that was deliciously crispy.

The second appetizer was the pork buns, that were a bit disappointing, the slices of pork belly being quite small compared to the buns. Too bad because the pork was well cooked. It was also missing something that would give some crunch such as cucumber or pickles.

Then, we shared a tuna roll that were good but fairly common.

No, the most noticeable dish was the Nippori ramen, made with a mildly spiced chicken stew noodle soup, mixed with soybean powder, coconut milk, cilantro, red onions and crunchy lotus roots. It was a very good ramen, with lots of fresh cilantro and a delicious silky broth that had some sort of Thai inspiration with the coconut milk I guess.

I decided to add some pork belly to it, that came separately. I should mention that the ramen came with a perfectly soft boiled egg. As far as the noodles were concerned, they were also well cooked, slightly al dente.