Koichi Ramen Westboro

Koichi Paxton went to Japan to learn ramen. He spent four months in the kitchens of three restaurants there, working through the fundamentals of broth, noodle and topping, and the bowl he came back with carries his name. Koichi Signature Ramen sets bamboo, bean sprouts, a soft egg, green onion and kikurage into a pork broth, and it works as the menu's anchor — the clearest line between the training and the restaurant that followed. He runs it on Richmond Road, in the middle of Westboro.

The menu organizes itself into three broth families, and the pork side runs deepest. A Hakata-style tonkotsu anchors it, alongside a Miso Tonkotsu that folds house miso paste into the creamy broth and a Curry Tonkotsu carrying Japanese-style curry. The Black Garlic Tonkotsu is the one to reach for when the pork should taste more assertive; its roasted-garlic edge pushes the broth in a darker, deeper direction while keeping the same bamboo, sprouts, egg, green onion and kikurage that define the house bowl. The chicken side lightens the register — a shoyu, a Shio built on chicken and fish stock, and a house miso in chicken broth with mushrooms and green onion.

The vegetarian ramen is a full third of the operation rather than a single token option. Shoyu, miso and Japanese-style curry versions each arrive finished with corn, mushrooms and bok choy, so a meat-free diner gets the same three-way choice the pork and chicken eaters do. Abura Soba sits apart from all of it — a brothless bowl that dresses the noodles in Japanese seasonings and sauces instead of soup, offered with regular or gluten-free noodles for a table that wants the ramen flavour in a different format. The appetizers stay short and deliberate: crisp, savoury Chicken Karaage, Agedashi Tofu under a savoury fish dressing, and gyoza and edamame, all of it built to set up the noodles rather than compete with them.

What that structure reveals is a kitchen unwilling to treat any single style as an afterthought. Plenty of ramen shops carry a vegetarian bowl the way they carry a children's menu — present, unloved. Here the meat-free side gets the same attention as the tonkotsu, and the appetizer list is edited down to the few plates that actually help a bowl of ramen land. The topping set that defines the Koichi bowl — bamboo through kikurage — repeats across the pork lineup as a kind of signature, so ordering a second tonkotsu still feels like eating inside one cook's point of view rather than sampling a category.

That point of view traces straight back to Paxton's months abroad, the restaurant's founding fact. He trained with ramen chefs across three restaurants in Japan before building the signature bowl from what he learned, which is why the house style reads as considered rather than assembled from a supplier's catalogue. The result is a menu that keeps circling back to a single idea worked out in someone else's kitchens first, then set down on a Westboro storefront and cooked the same way every day.

Day to day, Koichi Ramen Westboro works as a neighbourhood noodle shop more than a destination. It opens for lunch and stays open through dinner every day of the week, takes walk-ins without reservations, and runs takeout and delivery for the nights a bowl travels home instead of staying at the table. The compact menu keeps that simple — one ramen per person, a shared plate of karaage, and you are done. For a stretch of Richmond Road with no shortage of places to eat, the draw here is narrower and clearer than most: a cook who went to learn ramen, and a short menu that spends all of its attention on getting that one thing right.