This ramen will warm and cheer you up, especially if you score a 1-in-10 smiley-face egg

Choose from Fukuoka-style tonkotsu or Yokohama-style iekei at this new Union Road venue combining ramen-ya, cafe and listening bar.

Melbourne is in the middle of a ramen boom. Every week, it seems like there’s a new tonkotsu specialist creating queues, or an established Japanese ramen brand sliding into town. Many of these shops meld and mash culinary histories and ramen styles and, sometimes, they allow for more nuanced perspectives through the lens of the owner’s stories. Such is the case at Cafe Ogawa.

Melbourne hospitality veteran Kantaro Okada spent four years living in Machida, Tokyo, where he fondly recalls the meals he enjoyed at ramen heavyweight Atsushi Ogawa’s restaurants, including Fukuoka-style tonkotsu and Yokohama-style iekei ramen. After Okada returned to Melbourne, a conversation between him and Ogawa resulted in a 2025 pop-up in Carlton. A split popular vote from customers means both ramen styles are now on the menu at Ascot Vale’s permanent Cafe Ogawa space.

There are no visible queues outside this popular restaurant, but neighbouring Union Road venues provide the opportunity for an anticipatory drink if you’re placed on the waitlist. When summoned by text message, taking a seat at the kitchen’s horseshoe counter allows you to watch your meal being assembled.

The iekei ramen combines pork and shoyu (soy sauce) broth with Atsushi Ogawa’s sardine and bonito-based seafood extract blend, and a top note of flavour from chicken oil.

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Dried futomen egg noodles are imported, along with broth concentrates, from the Ogawa factory in Japan for seasonal consistency. These noodles are boiled to thick fullness, slipped into your iekei broth, and topped with nori, spring onion, and chopped spinach. Slow-cooked chashu pork is sliced and blow-torched to order and placed atop your bowl.

The founding Okada-Ogawa duo divide responsibilities. Atsushi Ogawa’s remit is the quality of ramen offerings, and Okada focuses on customers’ experience of service and the space. The kitchen spectacle and counter seating evoke the ramen shops of Japan. Ogawa wants you to focus on connecting with the food and people, so has placed overhead magnets at the counter seats to hold your phone aloft and out of view to record your first slurp, which is immediately rich, complex, and comforting.

Twin turntables spin anything from Wes Montgomery to Jamiroquai records from Okada’s own collection (although it can be hard to hear some of the audio over the sound of extractor fans).

If you’ve levelled up y