Shin-Sen-Gumi Hakata Ramen – West L.A.

As a huge ramen fan, this is my go-​to spot for ramen. For only $ 7 dollars for a standard bowl of ramen, the food is cheap and delicious. This place can get pretty crowded during rush hour but the wait is worth it. Compared to other ramen places, the soup isn’t as fatty and the noodles here are the best compared to the other places that I’ve been to. Also, if you check in, you get a free noodle refill, which would cost $ 1.25.
One of the best things I like about eating here is the very energetic and upbeat vibes that the workers give. When you come in, you are immediately greeted in Japanese by all the workers, who seemed to have practiced in unison greet your party all at once. As far as authentic hakata ramen, this place is as good as it gets.

Maybe I just need to come to terms that ramen is an expensive meal. For a regular bowl, which is rather small, with 2 sides (the minimum I think you need since one is needed to get anything spicy and the egg is of course mandatory) expect to pay $ 15 with tip. For me, that is really expensive for a small bowl of soup. I ordered strong broth and it was bland in my opinion. The marinated egg was over boiled and tasted like a dry hard boiled egg. None of the amazing moist flavor I would expect. I definitely won’t come back here for the ramen, but they do have $ 1 pints happy hour so I might be back!

I had a great experience here. Came right after a conference got out, so it was early, about 5pm. Happy hour was in effect, so I had multiple draft Kirins for $ 1 each! One dollar!!! Love that!
The Hakata ramen was very good and flavorful. Meat was tender. I also ordered the grilled squid legs and they were a perfect side. I will say the gyozas are really tiny so be aware if you are sharing.
We parked on the street fairly easily; it was metered parking. This is a great place for ramen with friends!

My fiancé and I love this place. Our go-​to ramen area in West LA. I love most the customization of the menu. Get as much oil as you’d like, order as many noodles as you’d like, get the noodles cooked any way. It’s awesome.
Pro’s:
— price, it’s cheap compared to other ramen places in the West LA area
— taste: haven’t beat flavor yet in LA
— Extra noodles! Check in on Unilocal and get them for free!
— Parking, pretty easy nearby, never had an issue
— Staff, super friendly/​attentive, chant cool things when you toast, when you sit down/​stand up to go. It’s fun!
— Call ahead if you have a group, no problem
— Happy hour!
Cons:
— if you get too many toppings, they add up price-​wise
— I think that’s about it.

Their ramen is Hakata style which is tonkotsu (pork) based broth originated from Fukuoka, Japan. The ramens come with onion, ginger, & pork but you order with a piece of paper so you get to customize everything to your liking! So if you want extra toppings you can choose those from a wide selection.
I got regular ramen with bamboo shoots & egg, it was yummy. The broth wasn’t too heavy or greasy like some other places and one serving of noodles was enough for me. But it’s super great that they have one free kaedama with a Unilocal check in because that came in handy for my boyfriend.
Their gyoza are tiny, I’ve never in my life seen such small dumplings = disappointing… would not recommend those. They have a lot of small appetizers which is cool and extends their menu to multiple pages! The servers are all attentive and nice and like a lot of other Japanese establishments they greet you when you enter and exit the store, makes me feel like I’m back in Japan :) :)

This is my place to go too ! After going to the VA medical center in WLA. Haven’t been since last year before I went to Colorado for a month. Not to many good Ramen noodle places out there that I have found. What is nice is you order the noodles and condiments that you like with your order.

Come here for the customization.
I really enjoyed the Hakata Ramen here. I checked off hard noodles, kaedama (always), medium broth, light oil. Added bamboo, bean sprouts, soft seaweed, and poached egg.
The customization is cool since sometimes you get super salty ramen. The bowl came out really nice with the broth, noodles, ginger, scallions. However the side dishes, because you’re ordering them as sides, are bland. When you mix them in, it helps a little but in the end, it would’ve been better if the sides were cooked in the broth for 30 seconds.

Thanks to Weekly LaLaLa’s Ramen Pass last year, I had the pleasure of adding Shin-​Sen-​Gumi as my number one go-​to ramen place! Their Tonkatsu ramen always hits the spot when the ramen cravings start creeping in. Oh and did I mention they’re nice on the wallet too? It’s a little less than $ 7 a bowl, but it’s an even better deal if you can get one of their lunch combos with gyoza or spam musubis!
Oh and psstt if you check-​in on Facebook or Unilocal,you can get a free extra serving of noodles on a full sized bowl (don’t forget to save some broth for round 2)!
New to the world of ramen? Here’s my go-​to: Full sized ramen, hard noodles, strong soup base, light oil, chashu, green onions, and a couple dashes of togarashi pepper (no ginger or sesame seeds for me though)
If you still have room, I also like to get a side of rice and gyoza! See ya there!

One of the few Ramen places that’s a chain. Price is affordable and also has special lunch sets during the weekdays that is no more than $ 10. The waiters are friendly and they are Japanese. They keep the customs alive when they greet customers as they come in. Small area no more than 30 people but it’s a great place to grab lunch. Highly recommended for people on a budget.
I ordered the lemon pepper fried chicken, hakata ramen set with the spam musubi and a side of flavored eggs. Best combo ever!

Party of three slipped in on a rainy day and found a cozy four-​top by the window. This place looks so much more inviting on the inside — the outside looks pretty gray and nondescript. And, after numerous drivebys, it was time to pop in.
Very good, very tasty, reasonably priced. The basic Hakata Ramen is a good template (with classic pork-​broth) onto which you pick some extras for a little more. The flavored egg and spicy miso for me worked out fine. Could easily share the spicy miso as I was treading carefully. I ate my bowl maybe too quickly, but I was hangry! My company each did the Shrimp Wontons in their Hakata, which were a big hit. They each got 6 or 5 of these good sized dumplings at $ 3.50 per order. Enough for them to share with me! Service is friendly, and although busy, they were very calm and even-​keeled.
We thought seriously about the dessert. They have a few good choices, but somehow we decided to stroll over to Sawtelle and finish ourselves there. Still, the ice-​creams, the Crème brûlée and more caught our attention at Shin Sen.
They have Happy Hour during the week, and that seems pretty popular, too. Whenever you go, look for some street parking and slide on over. I think we lucked out in terms of how busy they were. We walked right in. But, there’s a sign-​up sheet outside the restaurant, and I don’t know how OK I’d be waiting around to get it. Still, it might just be worth the wait.

Great ramen just a little bit north of the Japanese establishment cluster on Sawtelle.
Here’s how it works. You pay around $ 7 for a bowl of pork ramen that includes chashu with noodles, garlic, ginger, and green onions. You can customize how salty you’d like the broth and how firm you’d like the noodles. There’s no wrong way.
You pay between $ 1-​$ 3 for additional toppings with the pork. I recommend getting the seasoned hard boiled egg to go on top. For $ 1.50 it’s totally worth it.
Great spot.

Nothing to say but good service and good food!
Lots of menu choices. Salads, tapas and ramen. Little crowded at lunch but worth the wait. Highly recommended. Oh yeah and green tea crème brûlée. Not to be missed.

With so many ramen places in Sawtelle, it’s tough to decide on one. However, Shin Sen Gumi certainly has its advantages.
1) Location — being further away from the heart of Sawtelle gives it less traffic, less of a line, and somewhat easier parking (though parking in Sawtelle is never easy)
2) Customization — The ramen is can be customized based on the noodle, broth, and add-​ons (more types of meat, eggs, veggies). There is an extensive list of add-​ons. Can quickly get pricy.
3) Solid Customer Service — Really nice and attentive staff. I’m also a sucker for when they shout they greetings/​irasshaimase and thanks
There’s usually a nice lunch special that consists of a ramen bowl and a side (musubi, curry bowl, etc). The normal broth here is much lighter than Daikokuya down the street, but you can opt for heavy broth which brings it closer. Overall, a solid place for ramen.

Felt like having some carbs on the evening of Christmas day (baaaad…very baaaad), so we decided to see what is on Sawtelle. Well, what do you know, it was a quiet night for Sawtelle. We drove up and down the street but didn’t see many restaurants opened, so we went up the street and passed SM Blvd and there it is, an opened ramen place called Shin sen gumi hakata. We Unilocaled and it looked ok so we found street metered parking quite easily since the entire street was pretty much dead on Christmas day.
There was no wait, so we sat down right a way. You think menus would be simple, right? NO. Hot noodle, cold noodle, this ramen is available to go, that ramen is not available to go, topping this and soft noodle that. Well, I guess the good old days of «just order and give me» is not here anymore. I really miss those days… LOL because I just don’t want to use my brain on X mas day. This type of menu reminds me of the days I liked my android phone because I can do this and custom that… OMG, it became too much so I opted for iphone now… Just do it for me so I can enjoy using it and not waste my time on configuring it…
Ok, nough of the Blah Blahs. We ordered 2 Hakata Ramen large ($ 6.95 each) because 1^st time check in on Unilocal,you get the extra kaedama yawa FREE only if its large! We had the soft noodles, less grease oil, and NO onions please. In addition, we ordered the extra chashu ($ 2.50) and bamboo ($ 1.75).
Overall, it was an excellent quickie (lol)!! The food came fast along with all the extras. In less than 40 min, we were ready to go home… wahhh…awesome! By the time we were ready to leave, people started to come in. Whew… so glad we didn’t have to wait for a table.
So the food was good and all and all was great, and why the 4 stars? I have to subtract 1 star for not able to understand a word the girl waitress was saying to us… all the mumble jumbo she said about when can I order the extra kaedama yawa and all the blah blahs went right through my skull. But I am sure she is very nice. It’s just that I wish I’d understand what she said to me so I don’t look dumb ya know!!!
Great ramen and great prices. I highly recommend it. If there is no wait for a table, this would be my go to ramen place since it’s the closes one that taste the best to us! YAY, finally a ramen place that doesn’t have huge quantity of fat and grease and over powering spices to kill the true taste of a bowl of great RAMEN! Amen, my Unilocaler friends!

We stopped by here for lunch in LA before driving back up to South bay, since the other ramen places on the street had a long wait. This place had no wait and plenty of seating, but the ramen was decent.
I liked that the ramen bowls here are quite customizable – on a little sheet of paper, you can choose how heavy the base/​broth is, noodles (soft/​hard), and the toppings that you want.
I ordered the pork ramen with medium noodles and light broth, with all the complementary toppings except ginger. I also added a poached egg and corn.
The noodles and broth were really good. I’ve definitely had better pork at other ramen places though, and the poached egg was practically raw, so I was too afraid to eat it.
The customer service is okay, although the staff wasn’t that attentive even though it wasn’t busy at all.

First time here and I have to say the ramen and menu prices are very good. However, the reason why I only gave 3 stars was because of the poor service.
I came in with a group of 5 and throughout the entire time we had a hard time flagging down our server without having to wave our hand around. He seemed to periodically check up on every other table but ours… not quite sure why.
Not to mention, we ordered 3 Hakata ramen + spam musubi specials and they forgot about our spam musubis. When we told our server he wasn’t even apologetic, all he said was «You didn’t get it yet? Do you still want them or do you just want to cancel?»
I don’t think I’ll be coming back. I may give the Little Tokyo location a try instead.

Good ramen. They specialize in pork ramen and the broth is great. I was a little confused as to how to order but the server was great and walked us through it. You can order the texture of your noodles here so I ordered mine medium style.
If you check in on Unilocal,you get a free noodle refill. It’s a great idea but a lot of food so make sure you consider it before carb loading at lunch.

I have been to the Little Tokyo and Rosemead locations and really liked the ramen. Live nearby this one, but have always gone to the main Sawtelle spots so I finally decided to hit this place up. It’s a bit further and off the beaten path. Met a friend here on a Saturday night. Parking was a bit tough, drove around for a while before discovering a lot a block away with meters up until 9PM.
Waited a few minutes but didn’t take too long. This location is much bigger than the other locations and the menu seems more extensive. We ordered Sapporo, some edamame and our ramen with the various toppings. Everything came out pretty fast. The ramen was delicious and the staff was super friendly. The waitress who brought out our beer did a cheer with us and as per most Shin Sen Gumis that I have been to, the staff was always shouting — greeting people and what not.
Overall a cool spot to eat and hang out.

Great to have Shin-​sen-​gumi in Sawtelle after having gone to the one in Little Tokyo so often.
One thing I really like about Shin-​sen-​gumi over the glut of ramen shops in LA is that their menu is super customizable with several different items to choose from. You can essentially build your ramen bowl to suit your exact tastes.
$ 7.95 as a base price but when you’re done adding toppings it ends up being about the same price as other ramen places anyway.
Another neat feature of Shin-​sen-​gumi is that you can get extra noodles free with Unilocal Check-​In.
Takoyaki was good and they have a pretty good appetizer menu.
Probably one of the best features of Shin-​sen-​gumi in Sawtelle is that there are less lines than anywhere else on a Saturday night because of it’s location further off the Sawtelle strip.
Overall, I’ve always been satisfied with my ramen here. It isn’t the best in any one category (i.e. noodles, broth, toppings) but it is more than satisfactory in all categories. I’ve always found it to be lighter than most other places but the noodles are thin and firm without having to ask for extra firmness.

There are a few ramen restaurants in the Sawtelle (Asian) area… Shin Sen Gumi is one.
I like their concept… pick the size of the bowl, hardness of the noodles, thickness of the soup and then order the different ramen sides (tofu, wontons, kimchi, garlic, extra charshu, veggies, etc. etc). Be careful, for you ramen fanatics that love tons of sides, your ramen $$$ will add up.
I usually give ramen restaurants 4 – 5 stars. I was fairly disappointed with this West LA location. First… the broth wasn’t as flavorful as their Little Tokyo location. I was missing 1 side they never brought out for me (the wontons), they charged me for it but they kindly reversed the charges after I informed them (awesome). The waiter never brought me my free noodles for checking into Unilocal as well.
This location wasn’t too busy when I walked in with my son. Plenty of street metered parking as well. Takoyaki was okay as well. Nothing spectacular.