Ramen Jin Houston: A 2.5-Hour Wait for a Bowl That Tasted Like Water

I’d been hearing rumours about a new ramen shop opening in the Westchase area for months. So when my friends texted me to say they were going on the second day of opening, I dropped everything and met them there.

Ramen Jin storefront at night with a red lantern glowing inside

The Wait

My friends arrived around 6:45pm and got in line. I showed up about 15 minutes later. The line was still inside the building, which was a relief — it was freezing outside.

Packed interior — every table full, people standing, the line barely moving

What wasn’t a relief was how slowly that line moved. One foot every ten minutes. People were giving up and leaving. The problem was clear: the kitchen couldn’t keep up with the crowd, and they were short-staffed. The cashier was also cleaning tables and running food. We could see half the tables sitting empty while we stood there waiting to order.

Total wait time in line: 2 hours and 30 minutes.

The Gua Bao

We ordered tonkotsu ramen and a few appetizers. The gua bao came out quickly after we sat down — crispy pork in a steamed bun with cilantro, pickled greens, and crushed peanuts.

Gua bao — crispy pork belly in a steamed bun with cilantro and crushed peanuts

This was actually decent. The pork was crispy, the bun was soft, and the combination of textures worked well. If the rest of the meal had been at this level, we’d have been fine.

It wasn’t.

The Ramen

After we sat down, we waited another 30 minutes for the ramen. People who ordered after us were getting their food first. My friends were losing the will to live.

Tonkotsu ramen with branded egg, pork slices, bamboo shoots, and nori

The bowl looked promising — branded egg, decent-sized pork slices, bamboo shoots, nori, sesame. Presentation was fine. But then I tasted it.

Let me break it down:

The broth: Tasted like water. Literally. No depth, no richness, no pork bone flavour. A tonkotsu broth should be milky, creamy, and full of collagen. This was thin and bland.
The egg: Half-cooked, which is correct, but it tasted like a plain boiled egg. No soy marinade, no seasoning. The branded stamp on the outside was the most interesting thing about it.
The pork: Soft and tender — I’ll give them that. But way too salty. It felt like the salt that should have been in the broth ended up entirely in the meat.
The noodles: Too firm, undercooked, with no flavour absorbed from the broth — because the broth had nothing to give. They needed more time in the pot.

After a three-hour ordeal, this was deflating. The bowl looked the part but had none of the substance.

The Verdict

Score: 6.5 / 10 — I wanted to like Ramen Jin. The space looks good, the gua bao was solid, and the ramen had the right visual presentation. But a three-hour total wait for a bowl with watery broth, bland noodles, and an unseasoned egg is hard to forgive.

It was opening week, so some issues are expected — understaffing, kitchen timing, long waits. Those things get fixed. But the flavour of the broth is a recipe problem, not a growing-pains problem. If the broth doesn’t improve, the rest doesn’t matter.

For now, Tiger Den in Chinatown is still my first pick for ramen in Houston. It’s not even close.