Ramen Izakaya Akira: A Japanese Pub-Style Eatery with a Few Rules

Akira Imamura, the owner and chef of Ramen Izakaya Akira in the Castle Hills area of Lewisville, wanted to create his restaurant as an izakaya, which is a pub-like style eatery common in Japan. The website blurb states that the broth cooks for over eight hours and that the noodles are made in-house. Word of mouth, both traditional and via social media, talks very highly of this place. Always in search of great noodles and savory broth, we were anxious to finally check this place out.
Now, this is a relatively small place that seats just 27, so the chef has a set of rules posted both on the website as well as prominently on the menu in an effort to … streamline the dining experience. One of the most important rules to keep in mind is that they will only seat parties of four or fewer. If there are six in your party, well, you’ll have to eat elsewhere. While we were there that evening, we saw this actually occur: a party of five came in, and it was explained to them (politely) that they could not be seated. So, keep this in mind; they’re not playing about party size.

If you can live with that rule (and the other six), you’ll be rewarded with some good eats. Appetizers include bluefin carpaccio, hamachi carpaccio, beef tataki, deep-fried gyoza and chicken karaage. Rice options include curry rice, fried chicken curry rice and a pork chashu bowl. There are also a variety of Japanese beers and iced or hot green tea.The headliner, however, is the ramen, which can be created with three different broths: pork shoyu, which is a soy sauce tonkotsu; pork shio, which is an umami tonkotsu created from vegetable and scallop extract; and chicken broth. All three of these broths, furthermore, can be ordered spicy, garlic, spicy garlic, or as is. If the math is correct, that accounts for twelve different ways one can order their ramen, and that’s before the optional additions of any of the various toppings offered such as bamboo shoots, spicy miso or bean sprouts.

We started with some gyoza and karaage. The gyoza being deep-fried instead of pan fried created an overall consistency and pleasant crunch to the chicken and pork dumplings. The chicken karaage was a revelation and just incredibly delicious. This tender and flavorful chicken was coated in potato starch and then deep-fried in oil until it was crisp and was served with some sort of aioli that went well with the chunks of chicken. We are definitely ordering this again.For ramen, we went with the spicy chicken broth and the spicy garlic shio broth. Both were served piping hot with a rich broth that had character and nuance. The shio broth especially was a different experience from the normal miso variety. It indeed had umami, and the scallop notes were hints and not an overpowering fishiness. Each bowl had an entire egg, not simply a half.  We will be back, and it is easily worth a visit to Lewisville for those jonesing for a good ramen. As long as you can abide by the seven rules, you’ll be fine.

Ramen Izakaya Akira; 2540 King Arthur Blvd, #126 (Lewisville) 11:30 a.m. - 2 p.m.; 5 p.m. - 9 p.m. Wednesday - Sunday; closed Monday and Tuesday