Daiboku Ramen

Just like a good song or latte flavor, a bowl of ramen should fit your mood, the season, and the weather. And while a lot of people associate ramen with rainy days, we’ve found it’s just as great in triple-digit temps or breezy fall afternoons. Daiboku Ramen is a ramen shop just north of the UT Campus, where you can choose your own noodle adventure. 

photo credit: Richard Casteel

Daiboku is from the same team behind Sazan Ramen—a spot we really like—but unlike its sister restaurant with a hyper-focus on chicken-and-pork paitan broth, Daiboku’s menu is all over the place (in the best possible way). Sure, you can get a similar, creamy chicken broth here in the form of spicy, very spicy, or very very spicy miso ramen. But you can also get a light and delicate bowl of smoked chicken shoyu ramen with chicken thighs, or give up subtlety altogether and get the miso jirokei bowl topped with flaming hot cheetos, american cheese, and extra pork fat. There’s even a vegan version of the miso and shoyu bowls, so your meat-free friends don’t have to resort to filling up on white rice and Japanese pickles. And since this is right by UT, the drinks are priced with student budgets in mind, with a few house cocktails, sake, beer, and wine. 

photo credit: Richard Casteel

photo credit: Richard Casteel

photo credit: Richard Casteel

photo credit: Richard Casteel

There’s a ramen bar inside with a half-dozen seats where you can pop in for a quick meal between classes or between meetings, but there are also a handful of long wooden tables spread around a fairly large dining room decorated with dim lanterns and hanging plants. It’s dark and sleek inside—it’s easy to forget that you’re sitting in a small strip mall restaurant between a bookstore and a Juiceland just a few blocks from UT. 

Maybe you like listening to Summer Breeze in December, maybe you prefer your pumpkin spice lattes in the heat, and maybe you just want a choice on what you want to eat and when you want to eat it. You can go a lot of directions at Daiboku Ramen, and we’ve yet to find a bad one. 

Food Rundown

photo credit: Richard Casteel

Daiboku Wings

Wings are served whole, in three or six piece orders. The flavors are great and the meat is incredibly tender. We just wish they were a little crispier. Grab an order to share with the table.

photo credit: Richard Casteel

Smoked Chicken Shoyu

Daiboku struck gold with the smoked chicken shoyu bowl–this is one of the best bowls of ramen in Austin. The broth is packed full of subtle smoke flavor, but still remains light enough to enjoy on a hot day. And the house kosho and scallions add a bit of brightness back to it all. If you’re only getting one bowl, get this one.

photo credit: Richard Casteel

Spicy Miso

Our go-to order when the weather cools down a bit. This bowl blends a chicken paitan broth with miso tare, resulting in an ultra-creamy bowl of ramen. The thin and flat noodles allow for a little more broth coating with each bite. Just be careful on the heat levels—even the second level up comes topped with a small mountain of sliced habanero peppers.

photo credit: Richard Casteel

Daiboku Miso Jirokei

Basically a f*ck it bowl of ramen. Don’t come here expecting subtlety or anything delicate. This tastes like drinking a bowl of rich, fatty pork broth with probably an entire head of garlic in it. It’s rich, heavy, and decadent. And if you really want a spectacle, you can order it topped with flaming hot cheetos, american cheese, and extra pork fat. It’s a little over-the-top though, and we prefer it served classic.