Just in time for the mid-January chill, Kaliubon Ramen has opened its new West Hartford location in Blue Back Square, offering several varieties of soul-warming ramen, noodle dishes and other Asian small plates and specialties.
The restaurant at 54 Memorial Road takes the place of INDIA, which closed in March 2019. It’s the second outpost for Kaliubon, which opened its original ramen shop on Wethersfield’s Silas Deane Highway in February 2018.
Kaliubon partners Kevin Xu, Raymond Zheng, David Jiang and William Chen, who have previously worked with the Ginza Restaurant Group, have eyed West Hartford as a potential new location for a while. They were attracted to the layout of the former INDIA and its semi-open kitchen, Xu says, and made mostly cosmetic changes to the space.
ATMOSPHERE: The restaurant, with seating for 50, features colorful wall lighting and sleek booths, some that can fit up to eight guests. Xu says Wethersfield often attracts larger parties, so they wanted to make sure they could accommodate bigger groups in West Hartford.
FEATURED/NOTEWORTHY DISHES: West Hartford’s menu offers 10 types of ramen, starting with freshly prepared noodles, crafted on site in Wethersfield with a state-of-the-art machine the partners brought in from Japan.
Broth bases include classic shoyu, tonkatsu and miso, with an additional coconut curry option, a vegetarian variety and a hot and sour Szechuan style. Tantan mazemen, with ground pork and sunny side egg, is prepared without broth, and a gluten-free ramen preparation is available with chicken or shrimp. Ramen bowls are $11 to $13 at lunch and $13 to $15 at dinner.
Extra toppings ($1 to $5 apiece) are available to customize your bowl, like chashu and ground pork, braised short rib, wontons, chicken, shrimp, seasoned egg, vegetables, extra broth and kae-dama (extra portion of noodles.)
Popular starters ($5 to $7.50 at lunch; $6 to $10 at dinner) include bao buns with pork, lamb or tofu; pork and shrimp dumplings in Szechuan chili sauce; wings in sweet and spicy Korean or garlic shoyu sauces; and a Brussels sprout salad with tamarind dressing. A beef spring roll is wrapped with cream cheese and caramelized onions, flavored with spicy truffle aioli. Vegetable plates include garlic edamame with truffle butter shoyu and goma-q, a cucumber salad with creamy sesame dressing.
A weekday lunch special ($15) features ramen combos, with your choice of ramen and an appetizer (pork or lamb bao, beef spring roll, dumplings, Brussels salad or goma-q.)
While Wethersfield offers poké bowls, they’re not on the menu at the West Hartford restaurant, as Blue Back Square is already home to Poke Man, just a few doors down on Memorial Road.
Xu says the new location will add more Asian fusion-style tapas plates in the near future, as the restaurant settles in.
Kaliubon has a full liquor license, and Xu says they’ll be designing a cocktail menu to debut at a later date. Beer, wine and sake are now available, and the restaurant also offers bubble tea ($4.50) in several flavors, with tapioca, brown sugar jelly or lychee jelly.
DETAILS: Kaliubon Ramen is at 54 Memorial Road in West Hartford. It’s open Monday through Friday for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Dinner hours are 5 to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 5 to 10 p.m. Friday. On Saturdays, hours are 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sunday from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. 860-906-1678, kaliubon.com.
Leeanne Griffin can be reached at lgriffin@courant.com.
