Minca

Minca
536 East 5th Street

New York, NY, 10009
(212) 505-8001

My girlfriend and I had a long awaited night out to dinner recently at Minca. The line for this little “ramen factory,” as they call themselves, was out the door. Not surprising either seeing as how Minca is one of the top ramen shops in the Big Apple.

While waiting outside, we took a look at the menu so we could save that extra bit of time before being able to eat. About twenty minutes after we arrived, we were finally seated. The clearly overworked waitress seated us and then ran off again to service another table. Moments later she returned with utensils and water for us and took out order.

For appetizers, we tried the Tofu and the Homemade Shrimp Gyoza. The Tofu came served with what looked like dried fish flakes and scallions. There was also ginger infused soy sauce for dipping. Seeing as how both my girlfriend and I are not too keen on the taste of ginger, this dish was only nominally appealing to us; but it was still the better of the two.

The Shrimp Gyoza was just bad. The gyoza consisted of ground pork with a grilled shrimp loosely wrapped around a gyoza wrapper. Three things to note about these gyoza. First off, as mentioned before, there was quite a lot of minced ginger mixed into the ground pork which was quite unappealing for us. Secondly, the shrimp was left whole and completely inside the gyoza wrapper; which is fine, except that they left on the shell from the last segment and the tail. I got a very unpleasant surprise when biting into it. And last but not least, if you look at the picture, you’ll see that the gyoza was quite badly burned. There was even a giant crust of burned stuff that was attached to all the pieces.

For our ramen, my girlfriend ordered the #2 – Minca Sio which was a mix of Pork and Chicken broth base flavored with salt and roasted garlic. I opted for the #4 – Shoyu which was a pork broth with soy sauce flavoring. Both orders got thin noodles. I have to admit, I really didn’t like the ramen too much either. The broth for the Minca Sio was overpoweringly garlicky. It just didn’t taste right. As for the Shoyu, it was kind of boring. Absolutely nothing to write home about there.

This was quite a disappointing meal for both of us. We had such high expectations for Minca, especially since it’s so highly rated and so well known.