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North · Ramen · Sapporo
Umami Lab
Sapporo has its own ramen tradition — it is the city where miso ramen was born, a style built for long Hokkaido winters: rich, warming, unapologetically deep. Umami Lab brings that tradition to a quiet corner of Camden Town, tucked onto Plender Street a few minutes from the tube.
The room leans industrial — open and stylish, with the right music playing. This is not the old-school, town-Chinese shoyu ramen; it is the sleek, modern style of ramen-ya now trending across Japan, and it has landed in London fully formed. The reason it tastes the part is simple: the noodles come from Nishiyama, a Sapporo maker supplying the city’s ramen-ya since 1953, and the soup is shipped from Japan too. The result tastes completely, unmistakably Japanese. Three core broths anchor the menu — miso, shoyu and shio — at £17.5, served in handmade Mino-ware bowls, with a mazesoba for the no-soup crowd.
Sapporo Ramen — choose your broth
We started with a couple of the small plates — the “pinchies.”
Zangi — Hokkaido Fried Chicken (£8.5)
The zangi — Hokkaido’s take on fried chicken — was faultless: crisp and craggy outside, properly juicy inside, lifted by a squeeze of lemon.
Golden Chicken Gyoza (£8.0)
The chicken gyoza followed — thin-skinned and fried to a deep, even gold — served with a ponzu dip that did a lot of the work, sharp and citrusy against the crisp.
Then the bowls. We went for the shoyu (above) and the miso. The shoyu surprised us — a clear, soy-based broth with a real seam of sweetness running through it, rounded and moreish, topped with chashu, menma, woodear mushroom and beansprouts.
Umami Miso Ramen — Vegan (w/ Tofu)
The miso — taken in the vegan version, with tofu — was the highlight. You expect a Sapporo miso to dominate, but this one held back, deep and aromatic without ever shouting, and in doing so it drew out the sweetness in the rest of the bowl rather than burying it. Restraint that takes real confidence to pull off.
Matcha Soft Serve — Kagoshima Matcha (£5.0)
To finish — the shime — a matcha soft serve made with Kagoshima matcha. Soft, properly bitter at the edges, the green-tea note cutting cleanly through a rich meal.
Umami Lab is not trying to reinvent ramen. It is doing something rarer in London: importing the real thing — noodles, soup, sensibility — and serving it without compromise. Walk-ins are welcome and you rarely need to book. Budget around £25–35 a head with a small plate and a drink (a 12.5% service charge is added). Of all the ramen you can find in London right now, this is probably the closest you’ll get to the genuine article.
Address
5–6 Plender St, NW1 0JTArea
North (Camden Town)
Price
£25–35 per person
Nearest Tube
Camden Town / Mornington Crescent
Booking
Walk-ins welcome
Website
umamilab.co.uk