KYU BISTRO

Kyu Bistro is, to the best of my knowledge, the first and only ramen/izakaya restaurant to have sprung up in Winnipeg.  That's not to say that some of what they offer couldn't be found before, but it did take a bit of searching in order to find it.  The restaurant is tucked into a strip mall close to the Salter Street bridge and, were you not looking for it, you'd probably miss it.  That might be the reason why it was empty when we arrived at around 6:00 PM on a Sunday.

The menu is filled with pictures, which made ordering decisions difficult.  We started with chashu pork ($7) to start our unplanned hog themed meal.  The meat was juicy and tender but could have been a bit more aggressively seasoned as the bites without the spicy mustard accompaniment were a little lacking.  Our very favourite pieces were the ones with a crispy edge.  We only wished that these sought after bits were a little more prevalent.

My dinner date, A.,  ordered the shio ramen ($9).  The light broth tasted a little too much like kombu and not quite enough like pork for her tastes.  Her bowl was loaded with goodies - roast pork, egg, bamboo shoots, cabbage, corn, nori, fish cake and of course noodles.  The noodles were rightfully the star of the show - perfectly chewy and slurpable.  Even if we couldn't finish everything in our bowls, we made sure not to leave any of them uneaten.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from A.'s soup, I had the spicy miso ramen( $10).  The cloudy broth was sufficiently porky and rich, though not as spicy as I'd expected.  My bowl had fewer additions but I couldn't complain, as the pork in my ramen was both of our favourites of the entire meal.  Slightly sweet and just as fall apart tender as the chashu appetizer, I almost wished that we could have began our meal with this incarnation of pork instead.

Despite a few minor criticisms here and there, Kyu Bistro's extensive menu has me excited to go back and try more dishes that can't be found anywhere else in this city.  

185 Isabel Street