Waku Waku

We always love to highlight cool new restaurants on this show, and the place we're about to show you should definitely be added to your must visit list. It's a restaurant named Waku Waku, and they recently opened up on Moody Street in Waltham. Now their original location is in Boston's Chinatown. That opened up in 2022. And there's also a third location in Harvard Square Cambridge.

Waku Waku is a Japanese restaurant that specializes in two things: ramen and sake, and we're gonna get to the ramen in just a second. But first, I just want to walk you through this place, because it is a very cool looking spot inside. The vibe is just awesome. The lighting definitely catches your eye, there's lots of colorful Japanese art, there are these hanging plants everywhere, which definitely takes up your attention. There's also an electronic ticker above the bar, which gives you this sort of futuristic kind of feel to the restaurant like you're eating in modern day Tokyo. There's pulsing music always playing in the dining room. So there is lots of energy basically, you're not going to find many restaurants that look anything like this place.

Now, of course, I want to talk about the food and we're going to start with one of my biggest passions in life, which is ramen. Now let me just say this off the top- if you think this is what ramen is, I'm sorry. This is a cup of noodles you get at a convenience store. Ramen is an amazing, incredible traditional full Japanese meal served by the bowl and that is their specialty here. Usually has great slow cooked broth, all those noodles and they do several different styles of ramen at Waku Waku. If you have never had ramen before, the one I'm going to recommend is the signature ramen. It is a pork based broth has tons and tons of those noodles so you use the chopsticks to sop up all the noodles and you use a spoon to drink up the broth. It comes with all the traditional accompaniments, you have the vegetables, you have an egg, ground pork, scallion, sesame, soy. And then on the side believe it or not, it comes with like another dish either a breaded and fried chicken or pork cutlet. So this is like a katsu if you will for Japanese, so you have your broth and you also have your chicken cutlet served on the side you dip that into some Japanese barbecue sauce and you are really going to enjoy it.

For those of you who like things spicy, the one I'm gonna recommend is the Tom Yum ramen. Tom Yum soup is a dish I get a lot of the times at Thai restaurants and you can see just by looking at this thing in the color, it is spicy. But it has roast pork and it comes with some lime and that helps cut through the richness and the spice. They also sometimes will do specialty ramens here seasonally, last time they came in they were doing a lobster ramen. So they take their regular ramen they make homemade lobster and chicken wontons and this is a really good option as well. And if you want to keep things traditional, go for what's called the Tonkatsu ramen. This is a pork based ramen that is cooked over hours and hours so it is creamier and fattier than the other versions. It's super rich, super filling, come hungry if you want to get the tonkatsu ramen.

Now in addition to all these incredible noodle soups, they also have lots of small plates you can share the table. You want to start with some dumplings or as they call them here gyoza as they are steamed and then pan fried over a little layer of flour so they come out not uniform. It almost looks like a crepe, they're crispy around the edges, but on the inside you have that juicy pork. And speaking of juicy pork, you definitely might want to get the charshu buns as well. This is served on that very soft and squishy Japanese steamed bread with the pork and the vegetables on the inside.

And of course at a Japanese restaurant, you may want to get some sushi. But at this place you're gonna get sushi tacos. So instead of a traditional tortilla they're using the nori, the seaweed that's very thin, crispy, shaped like a tortilla and these are excellent as well.

For dessert. You've already stuffed yourself with lots of ramen, lots of noodles and everything else, so you want to get something light. Here's what they have. It's called shaved ice. Shaved ice is absolutely delicious. A big bowl of just fresh shaved ice with some condensed milk, fresh fruit like strawberries and blueberries go on here. So it is very light, perfect way to end your meal.