Tasty & Creative Ramen at Soba Shinn
Soba Shinn & 柑橘 is a small, popular ramen shop in Zhongxiao Dunhua. We hadn’t heard of it until we were craving ramen one day and poked around on Google Maps to see which restaurants came highly rated. We were intrigued by Soba Shinn & 柑橘, which boasted a creative menu of citrus-based ramens and something called abura soba, a dry ramen. Literally translated as “oil noodles,” this is just ramen without the broth, which is apparently healthier. It started in the 1950s in Japan and though it has never quite achieved the popularity that other Japanese noodle dishes have, we were still pretty excited to try it out.
Soba Shinn & 柑橘 is not only popular but tiny, with only around 15 seats in the entire restaurant. Even on a Wednesday night this place was popping, and we had to put our names down and wait for much longer than we had originally anticipated — and we were only a table of two. If your group is larger than that, we would recommend going somewhere else — from what we’ve gathered in person and online, there’s a chance that you’ll have to wait forever, and you may not even get seated together.
There was a Chinese menu outside that we puzzled over for a while until an extremely welcoming waiter came outside with a menu that was also in English. He went through the menu with us, making recommendations, and we were able to order before we were seated.
His first recommendation was the soy sauce dry ramen ($170), which sounds painfully boring. We were tempted to go with something else, but our waiter’s energy and optimism was so unreasonably high that we felt bad contradicting him and begrudgingly gave the green light. We’re really glad that we trusted him on this, though, because this was easily the best dish of the night. Far from being boring, these noodles were flavourful and bouncy from start to finish. The toppings didn’t matter much — this was all about the noodles. They were fantastic. If you do go, definitely try these out!
The next thing we ordered was the chicken citrus clam ramen ($260), which comes with either light, regular or thick broth. There is a slight difference in price for each. We were definitely curious about the combination of chicken, citrus and clam, which is pretty bizarre at first glance. This is one of their best-sellers, so we took a chance. It wasn’t quite as good as the soy sauce dry ramen, since those noodles had been so perfectly flavourful, but it was still good. Our waiter explained that you should wait no more than two minutes before starting to eat, because the noodles would start to get soggy. The problem with this, though, was that the noodles didn’t have much chance to soak up the broth, which was really delicious. We’re not sure if choosing the heaviest option would be better, since the broth might be too salty to drink. Either way, we enjoyed the creativity of this ramen dish and loved the citrus/clam/chicken combination in the broth, but the noodles themselves could have been more flavourful. One thing to note is that the portion size was pretty small, so if you’re hungry, you may want to ask for extra noodles!
Since we loved the soy sauce dry ramen so much, we decided to try one more: spicy miso ($190). This didn’t quite live up to the high standard set by the soy sauce flavour, but was much improved by the addition of some spicy oil, yuzu chilli paste, and vinegar, which made it very tasty indeed. We would probably skip this next time and try one of the other flavours.
Check out their full menu here:
Overall, we really enjoyed our experience at Soba Shinn & 柑橘. It wasn’t the best ramen in Taipei, nor was it the best value, but we loved how creative the mix of chicken, clam, and citrus was, and absolutely adored the broth. The blandness of noodles themselves let the dish down a little, but we’d still get it again. The soy sauce dry ramen was absolutely fantastic, and we would strongly recommend giving it a try. We weren’t as in love with the spicy miso dry ramen, but playing around with it made it taste great. So if you’re looking for a quirky place to switch up your ramen routine, this might just be it!
What’s the vibe?
Small, modern ramen restaurant with interesting ramens and dry ramens. Customers were mostly Taiwanese in their 20s and 30s.
Worth it?
It wasn’t the best value in terms of portion size, but it also wasn’t that expensive. We enjoyed our meal and felt that it was creative enough to justify a slight hike in price.
Would you go back?
We would. We have a lot of ramen places to try out, but this is a fun spot to take people, and we definitely want to return to get the soy sauce dry ramen again!
Last updated: September 2019
| Soba Shinn & 柑橘 |
| Hours: Sun, Mon, Wed, Thurs: 11:45am – 1:30pm, 5:30 – 8:30pm Fri & Sat11:45am – 1:30pm, 5:30 – 9pm Closed Tuesdays |
| Phone: 02 2755 6705 |
| English Address: No. 228-6, Section 4, Ren'ai Road, Da’an District, Taipei City |
| Chinese Address: 台北市大安區仁愛路四段228-6號 |
