Another month, another review of a ramen specialist in the Twin Cities. Though our lunch at Ramen Kazama in Minneapolis last month didn’t blow us away, it did make us interested to check the state of ramen offerings more generally in the Twin Cities metro. Here, accordingly, is a report on St. Paul’s premier ramen outlet: Tori. They first opened as Tori Ramen in 2016 on Victoria St. in St. Paul and later opened another location in Northeast Minneapolis. The “Ramen” was dropped from the name at some point when the menu expanded to include more cooked items. Both of those locations are now closed and the only remaining location is the one opened in early 2020 in a restored train car on West 7th St. in St. Paul. This location too is only called Tori, even though they currently only serve ramen. We descended on them for a quick lunch this weekend ahead of some grocery shopping at Dragon Star. Here’s how it went.

The restaurant is as striking from the outside as you might expect and this continues in the interior. There’s a small seating area by the hallway as you enter, and some seats at the counter behind the host’s stand; but the majority of tables are in a long, narrow galley that extends the length of one side of the train car. At one end are tables that can accommodate larger groups but the majority of the seating is in the form of four-top booths and two-top tables. We were seated at one of the booths and quickly got down to business.

As you probably know, or may be able to tell by the restaurant’s name, Tori’s ramen broth is poultry-based and entirely pork-free (“tori” is Japanese for chicken/bird). By the way, the chef/owner, Jason Dorweiler, got his start slinging ramen at UniDeli inside United Noodles. I’m not sure though if he was still involved in 2018 when I wrote up the ramen there. On the whole, however, I think we enjoyed the non-chicken-only ramen at UniDeli back in the day more than we did this lunch at Tori. And that’s not because we don’t like chicken-based ramen—we quite enjoyed the ramen at Bantam King in DC, for example.

What did we get? Their menu includes a few classics and a few variations of their own. We stuck mostly with the classics. The younger boy got the Miso; the missus got the one they call Chicken Noodle; and I got the Fire Shoyu, the spicy version of their shoyu ramen. The older boy got the Salted Duck. All were fine enough but the only we liked enough to want to eat again was the Miso. I regretted getting the spicy version of the shoyu—not because it was very spicy, which it was, but because the heat overpowered everything else. It’s possible the base shoyu ramen is much better. The missus’ Chicken Noodle was rather blah; and the older boy’s Salted Duck would have been more accurately billed if listed as Sour Duck. The citrus they add to the broth dominated everything else. And the noodles were nothing to write home about, the texture more doughy than chewy,

Still, as I say, none of the bowls were bad per se. Are the other non-classic ramens they offer any better? Somebody who has eaten them all will have to say.

For a look at the restaurant, the menu and everything we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down for thoughts on service, to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next.

There seemed to be only person in the front of the house. As a result it took a while for us to get seated. We stood by the host stand for a while, not entirely sure if we should just seat ourselves. But once we were seated, service was fine. We certainly didn’t get pepper sprayed on our way out.

With a credit card surcharge, tax and tip, our total came to just about $97. This is almost the same as the cost of our meal at Ramen Kazama (subtracting the gyoza and karaage we also ate there) and I have to say I would take the Ramen Kazama meal over this in a heartbeat. On the other hand, this was better than our meal at Itton Ramen. Still, I don’t think we’ll be in a big hurry to return. I do want to keep going with the ramen reviews and the next will likely be from Tenka Ramen in Minneapolis. That will be sometime in April. This weekend we are scheduled to eat at Diane’s Place and then I’m off to Delhi next week for the rest of the month.