Men-Bei Ramen - Santa Clara

Spicy yakisoba

Tucked in a strip mall next to Costco, this restaurant could be missed easily. But we've been to this Costco pretty often and I have noticed this ramen store before. Only this weekend we have decided to stop by and tried it.

Though occupied the corner, once we went inside, it's not very spacious and part of it was used for kitchen. An older lady (maybe the owner) sat us on a table by the window. There were also seating area around the bar. I estimated that the place could only fit 25 people. And at the moment, it was about 85% full.



So we studied the menu and I chose the spicy men-bei ramen and hubby chose the yakisoba. Though I wanted him to try the gigantic size omurice aka omelette rice. Maybe next time.

spicy men-bei ramen

The orders took about ten minutes to arrive. First we were brought this ramen bowl with ramen and bok choy with strands of red strings that looked like saffron. While I asked hubby to take picture of my bowl of ramen. Here came another bowl of ramen ! And we were like hmm, we didn't order this. So I flagged the older lady that sat us. I told her that hubby's order supposed to be yakisoba. Then on a second though I asked her whether my bowl was men-bei ramen. And she apologized and took my bowl away. Oh...good thing I haven't tried it yet. But I got a picture of it. ha..ha.. And apparently ours wasn't the only mistake that happened. But another couple also got one of the order wrong.

My order came just a few minutes later and hubby's came about five minutes after mine. Both times, the older lady again apologized for the error.

My men-bei ramen looked fiery hot. I tried a bit of the broth and I immediately liked it. It had a very familiar taste to it. I think it tasted a bit like tan tan noodle style ramen from Halu ramen. But this ramen store also has tan tan ramen which I haven't had a chance to try yet. And surprisingly for a Japanese ramen, the spicy ramen was actually pretty spicy even for me who never found anything spicy enough. So extra points on that.

Hubby's yakisoba even though supposed to be spicy but came out a bit on the sweet side. I didn't find it any special. Maybe yakisoba isn't one of their strength.

I think we'll be back to try the omelette rice. I am still curious with that. Though hubby is a bit hard to convince. He believes ramen isn't something worth going to restaurant for.

Men-Bei Ramen
1349 Coleman Ave
Santa Clara, CA 95050
408 588 1557