Zubu Ramen is the newest addition to the ramen scene in Vancouver. The Burnaby location resides in the old Jinya location right beside Walmart by Metrotown. They updated the interior a little bit but overall it looks the same as it did previously. When we arrived, there were quite a few people dining on the patio but no one was eating indoors.
Service
We came in for a takeout order since we were going on a picnic. When we went in, we saw that there were two people at the back making food, and one server folding napkins. We waited a good 10 minutes and no one came to speak to us. We saw the people making food look over at us but they didn’t ask anyone to come help us. Since no one was coming to help us, I decided to walk towards the back of the EMPTY RESTAURANT to ask for help.
I was then RUDELY ushered out by another girl who worked there and was told to go wait at the front of the restaurant. She then talks to someone else before coming out to ask us for our name so we could get our order. After giving her our name, she rudely places our order on the table, doesn’t say anything and walks away. I understand if the restaurant was busy but it wasn’t and there were only 2 parties seated outside. I don’t know why we were warranted such rude service.
Needless to say, we were off to a bad start.
Yatai Chicken Ramen
The Yatai Chicken Ramen was underwhelming when we opened the container. For $14.50 a bowl, there wasn’t a very large portion. It came with clear chicken broth, 2 pieces of chicken, 2 pieces of bamboo shoot, green onion, togarashi, and ramen noodles.
Although the chicken broth was clear, it was still very flavourful and delicious. The chicken was tender and the bamboo shoots soaked up all the flavour from the broth. Our only complaint is the portion size of the dish and how they stuck together in the container.
Mazesoba
Mazesoba is a soupless noodle dish where you mix the noodle toppings together before you eat it. It’s one of our favourite ramen dishes to eat so we looked forward to trying it out. The Mazesoba from Zubu comes with Broth less ramen. Thick noodle, sansho sauce, diced pork chashu, minced pork, minced garlic, kikurage, bean sprouts, and green onions.
Since we were eating it out of a takeout container it was a bit difficult to mix but we figured it out. There was a good amount of pork and vegetables in the noodle dish to give you a mouthful of toppings in every bite. The noodles also had the perfect of level of spice from the sansho chilli sauce. Usually when we go for mazesoba, it comes with a small bowl of rice to have at the end but we didn’t get one here. Overall, I was pretty satisfied with this flavour packed bowl of ramen noodles.
