Tenkaippin Ramen

A friend of mines recommended this place to me, and to be completely honest, this is probably one of the worst ramen places I’ve gone to. For starters the koterri ramen was just awful. The broth was extremely thick, thick to the point that it had a stew like texture, which turned me off. Also the taste of the broth was unbalanced and had a grainy texture that bothered me a lot. I’m only giving this one more star then it deserves because atleast the aji tamago (egg) tasted good. But that’s the only thing I can honestly give a compliment on.

A really good ramen shop on Kapahulu. Been around for a while. Always mentioned in conversations about the best ramen shops in town.
I’ve had the Kotteri (thick chicken broth,) Assari (shoyu,) and Paitan (tonkotsu.) All were good. Toppings are adequate. The prices here are lower than the other ramen shops that I frequent.
Nice, old-​fashioned type of shop with a counter in the middle. A little warm inside. The people are friendly and the service is good. A nice place to drop in if you’re in the Kaimuki area.

Soooo, I think this ramen place is popular on the island. My first time here and I don’t want to return. Apparently, it’s owned by the family who starred in the tv food show, Ultimate Japan… I think. I saw a lot of framed pictures on the wall of fame, and they’re on tv. I came on a Saturday off peak hours. Dang, they get lines.
We ordered the Kotteri Ramen ($ 11) and the Assari Ramen set that comes with gyoza ($ 15). Holy snap the soup was thick!!! It tasted like pasta ramen. It was salty and tons of seasoning. The assari ramen had a lot of little pieces of chopped ginger in the soup. Do they expect customers to eat that? I honestly don’t know what the rave is about here. The amount of noodles for what you pay… overpriced maybe. I think each year they raised it like a $ 1. Dang, what if the noodles become $ 20 in a few years?! I’m exaggerating. but just saying. I think people come for the name. If you don’t like thick soup for your noodles then this ain’t the place for you.
Service was okay. Check in on Unilocal,you’ll get 10% discount only on weekdays and certain time. WTheck, it didn’t even say that on Unilocal.Places that trick you like that, not the first time.

Really tasty soup! I love the kotteri-​very thick, bone based broth. Perfect if you’re feeling a little under the weather. Today I had the paitan-​Pork bone based, not as thick as kotteri broth with medium thick noodles. Has menma (bamboo shoot I believe) garlic chips, pickled ginger and scallions. Mmmmmm savored that delicious soup. Also had the miso today – rich red miso broth topped off with bean sprouts and minced pork. You can also get a side order of fried rice and/​or Gyoza with lots of garlicky, spicy condiments to add.
Service is always fast and there’s usually space somewhere at the counter. A little tough on parking – behind by the Jamba Juice or across the street. There have been occasional little brown friends walking on the wall or on the counter. So the only thing I really wish they would do is to clean better and perhaps renovate. Yes, so people often say that’s part of the taste and charm but no brown friends at all would be better.

This place used to be my favorite ramen spot but I’m sorry to say it is no longer my favorite. I still really enjoy eating here and it holds some of my best memories with friends. We used to come here after hiking in the morning on Saturdays and enjoy a bowl of hot ramen to continue our sweating session after hours sweating hiking up and down the mountains!
Their fried chicken is still delish from what I remember.
I noticed there are some new broth types on the menu. Spicy is new for this place and has now been added to the menu. I will have to check this out!

I love this place! Their kotteri is my fave! I always get the tenichi set. The place is clean and service is awesome!

Worst Ramen place !!!
I have been to a lot of Ramen places in Oahu and this is the worst Ramen I have ever had. I was so disappointed!!! I ordered Ton ton Ramen spicy, the sauce is so thick and not enough to mix with the ramen noodles, it looks like dry ramen :-(. The taste is salty and nothing special it’s just chili, and pork broth.
I would not recommend this place at all.

I love their ramen here! They make it homemade and their broth is all sooo good! I think we have the best ramen places that is as close to being in Japan… They make their dishes with soo much love and it’s reasonable!
The customer service is outstanding every time I go in their the waitress she cracks me up always has something to say and I just laugh!
Love this place…

Brought my mom here and she says the ramen and the soup base itself taste just like the one in Japan. Definitely should go here with family. Especially good since my mom is a picky eater.

What did I just eat. or barely eat…
What a disgrace to the name and brand. The real one in Japan tastes nothing like this one. I really hope its just a franchise location.
First off, this was also the first time I waited 20 minutes for gyoza and 35 minutes for a bowl of ramen to come out in a place where it wasn’t even half occupied. We didn’t say anything about the wait since we were hoping to get the same taste as Japan but of course not.
We both got a combo with the gyoza. I got the Umakara (Spicy Miso Level 2) and the lady got the new Ajigasane Ramen. Umakara ramen tasted like a chimichanga burrito inside a bowl of soup made from Tapatio. The Ajigasane ramen tasted like… nothing but just pork broth. Watered down pork broth. All 6 gyoza fell apart when we picked it up. The inside just literally came out. The taste was okay though.
Ranks top 3 of the worst ramen I’ve eaten in my entire life.
I guess some people like the taste but don’t expect the same taste as the ones in Japan.

Whenever my wife wants some Ramen, this is where she needs to go!
All the Ramen is tasty. Get super secret Hot Level 3 if you can handle. It’s actually not too bad. Maybe just make you sweat a little.
The fried whole garlic is sweet and salty. The Gyoza is tasty and the wait staff is fantastic. Very attentive and food comes out relatively quick.
Get here before 6 and you can probably sit right down, after 6:30, you may have to wait a bit.
In all, my favorite is Spicy Tan Tan level 3 spice with extra char siu!

Rainy day is soup day! And Tenkaippin is one of my favorite places to go for ramen soup!
Here the reviews:
–Ambience: limited tables to sit, you have better chances to find seating at the counter.
–Prices: between $ 10-​$ 15
You can also make it a combo and add gyoza or fried rice to your soup.
–Parking: Parking is in the back of the building (by starbucks and Jamba juice) DO NOT park where papa Johns is, you will get towed!
–Food: Must get Kotteri Ramen ($ 10) (Signature dish) it has a great flavor and soup is rich!
However, if you don’t like «thick» broths, this may not be the place for you.
Did you know it takes them over 10 hours to prepare this broth? The also bring ingredients and spiced directly from Japan.
*Tips: They dont take american express and they DO NOT accept take outs for the ramen.

Tenkaippin Ramen has all the ingredients for a great restaurant, but never really pulls through. Nothing that had was bad, but the downfall is that nothing was really good, either.
This was my first time eating at Tenkaippin, so I decided to go for one of the sets. One person in my party chose the «famous» fried rice, and another chose the gyoza, so I ordered the ramen + fried chicken set (~$ 14.50+tip). After reading reviews, I was very tempted to try the «gravy-​like» kotteri ramen, but in the end settled on the black tonkotsu because it came with an aji tamago.
I would love to tell you how the aji tamago was, especially since that’s one of my favorite ramen toppings, but guess what? It didn’t come with one. Nobody on my table with the black tonkotsu got one.
The rest of the toppings were good — menma, wood ear mushrooms, and thin-​sliced charsiu.
The broth was severely lacking in flavor, and had almost no black garlic oil. It was very substantial in a creamy way, but needed salt, garlic, msg, SOMETHING to pull it out of bland territory.
Noodles were actually very good, thin and flavorful. Unfortunately, they were overcooked and soft, which is not really great for ramen.
In the end, I ended up spooning quite a bit of the raw garlic & chili pepper mix that they have on their tables into my broth. I got mean garlic breath but finally achieved a nice, creamy garlic flavor.
The fried chicken shared the same fate as the broth — big, juicy, and substantial, but somehow completely lacking seasoning. It tasted like the chicken I made when I first started learning to cook and flavor. For $ 4 more, 3 pieces of chicken should be knocking my socks off.
My friend used the words «a big disappointment» to describe this meal. For the price we paid, there just wasn’t anything that was really good, that would make me want to return. At $ 10 a bowl, this isn’t cheap ramen. High-​quality ramen establishments are becoming more and more available in Oahu, and simply meeting the bar just won’t cut it anymore.

Meh, just ok. There was a cart-​full of puppies in the restroom area — what, what? Food was fine. Lots of people having the fried rice. We had ramen and yakisoba noodles. Just another fast service place with mediocre service and food.

I love this little Ramen place. Although parking stalls are a little tight.
No line today! I usually get the tan tan but today I decided to try the black tonkatsu ramen with garlic oil. It is Awesome, couldn’t help but order goyza. I also love the garlic sauce you can use!

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I found this Tenkaippin Ramen by a cab driver .On the Diamond Head end of Kalakaua avenue in Waikiki, where heading towards the mountain. The place is small and packed with people on a week night. And this place is about 10 minutes drive from the busy Waikiki Beach, the menu is small and straight forward.
I chose the Kotteri ramen because this was my first time. The infamous ramen with the super thick chicken broth, some add on menma (bamboo shoot), corn, and some beansprout, you get yourself a bowl of hearty goodness ramen. It was so different than anything that I’ve tried before. I enjoyed it.
This place is worth a drive. Check it out.

Ambiance — extremely huge motivating factor for returning back to a restaurant. Being that I enjoy hidden hole in the wall-​y locations over the «high class» /​fine dining restaurant.
Food — tasteful and street-​like.
Prices: Dope
Just go there alright?!

My wife and I walked about a mile to try their special chicken ramen, since my wife is a recovering vegan but has recently discovered that chicken is awesome, but hasn’t warmed up to eating pork yet. The waitress informed us that the secret recipe to the chicken ramen is PORK, so my wife had to settle for some tasteless special order vegetarian fried rice. There is no ramen on the menu that is pork free.
So if you don’t eat pork, and you think you can finally try some decent non-​veggie ramen, this place isn’t going to work for you.
For me, I just love tonkatsu ramen, and I was hesitant to go out of our way to get chicken broth ramen. While I do love chicken, I think that a proper ramen broth should have that thick sticky protein feel that only comes from boiling heaps of gristly pork bones for hours. But wow, was I surprised. The broth was thick like gravy, with a super sticky collagen mouth feel. It tasted like chicken, but with the mouth feel and richness of pork broth. I guess that’s not surprising since the secret ingredient is pork. Overall, I was very pleased with the ramen, although it was more like ramen noodles in gravy, rather than in soup.
Unfortunately, my wife’s veggie fried rice didn’t taste all that interesting, but she had to special order it since there was nothing on the menu that she could eat.

Their most recommended choice is Kotteri (chicken) ramen but to me, it’s very polarizing and an acquired taste. Myself, my wife, brother and sister in law can’t get past the thickness and weird texture of the broth which is accurately described by other reviews as thick as gravy. For being so thick, I would expect an intense and rich chicken flavor but it’s just ok. Is cornstarch or another thickener heavily used?
A safer pick is their black hoterri ramen, it’s pretty in line with the better ramen joints in town. Can’t go wrong here.
Their fried rice is pretty good and gyoza standard.
Please note that you are not allow to take home leftover broth or noodles.
Parking is a difficult and you would have to go to the neighborhood to find street parking.

I went for lunch. I ordered gyoza and cold noodles. Gyoza was ok, they kept breaking apart but the taste was good. The cold noodle sauce was tasty, but the noodles were under cooked. The toppings were mediocre; cucumber, tomato, charsu, and egg. Not the prettiest presentation.
Service was the same as the food, average. I’m not too sure why everyone raves about this place. I’ll be back if someone wants to go, if not I’ll be finding my ramen else where.