A Hot Bowl of Warm Contentedness

Dassara Ramen

Annie and I unexpectedly found ourselves on the hunt for ramen Saturday evening. We searched high and low for a new place for noodles and soup. We've already been to Zuzu Ramen on 3^rd Avenue a couple of times. We'd heard about Narudo Ramen on 5^th Avenue and just haven't gotten there yet. We were looking for something a bit more special...or at least something we hadn't heard of before. And we found that at Dassara Ramen on Smith Street. Driving around looking for a ramen place in Brooklyn, Google didn't let us down and steered us there. The clincher was...they have the ramen burger. And we didn't have to wait on a ridiculous line in hipstertopia to get it. As a matter of fact, we didn't even have to wait for a table. We even got a parking spot right across the street from the place.


Once again we found ourselves in a restaurant serving ostensibly Asian food and not an Asian employee in sight. What an interesting trend. But, at least the wait staff wasn't wearing pajamas. Although, perhaps if they had been in sleepwear, they'd have been a bit more attentive. The clientele was an odd mixture of bitter, miserable looking hipsters (or Try-Hards as a friend has coined them), very jovial-seeming yuppies, Asian families(which totally threw me) and us. You've got to be doing something right if you're a white guy running a restaurant serving Asian food and Asians come to your place. That's a good sign right away.


The décor is vaguely Asian. There are some posters on one wall and a giant digital display taking up the other. The images that ran across that wall were quite interesting. There were car crashes, Spider Man, Powerpuff Girls, James Bond (at least it was the Connery Bond, so that's good), the Statue of Liberty...there was more. It was a bit overstimulating actually. For a little bit I couldn't stop looking at it. It actually distracted me from conversing with Annie for a minute there.


Let me get the negatives out of the way first. They're small ones really, but sort of important. The service kind of sucked. It's a small room, maybe 30 seats, and the waitress was moving around a lot. But she took forever to take an order. It took a year and a day after we ordered our drinks and then it was another 6 months before she finally came back to take our food order. If you run a small establishment, customer service has to be a priority unless your product is extraordinary. Dassara was good, really good...but not so good that it's OK to neglect your customers. The second thing is...you can't run an Asian-themed restaurant and run out of Sapporo at 630pm. That's just poor planning right there.

Ramen Burger and Chips

Those small negatives aside, the food was a big positive in making up for it. We started out with Steamed Buns Stuffed with Falafel and Hummus. This makes Mike happy. I love falafel and hummus. Put that in a silky and sweet bao and I'm a happy guy. The falafel was crunchy and spicy, the hummus had great flavor and there was just enough red pepper flake in there for some heat. They rotate what they stuff the buns with (yeah, I said “stuff the buns” ya fucking pervs.), so you'll have to take your chances. We also tried the ramen burger as I mentioned before. The noodle buns (buns seem to be a theme in this paragraph) were interesting and kind of good. A little difficult to eat, as they sort of fall apart after you take a bite, but what else could you expect when you make a roll out of noodles. But the star of that show was the burger itself. It simply burst with flavor. Quite honestly, I didn't need the gimmicky noodle roll...I'd have been thrilled to eat that burger on a regular potato roll. Word of advice, don't add cheese. It's not often I say something as blasphemous as that, but cheese just doesn't seem like a good idea. We didn't do it and we don't think you should either.


For our ramen, which is the reason we came here, Annie and I both got the Xi'an Ramen. This was ground lamb and sausage in a spicy broth with cilantro and a poached egg. I'm pretty sure I tasted some cumin and some chili in there too. Once you break open the egg and mix it into the broth, it's just a bowl of rich happiness. The noodles weren't as good as the ones we had at Mission but still they were good enough. There's just something about a big, steaming bowl of ramen that hits me in that happy spot. It's somehow satisfying and calming almost. When it's done and I'm looking down at a few drops of broth and whatever I didn't slurp up or getting get my chopsticks to grab onto, I smile and sigh contentedly. The only thing that could make the moment after finishing a great bowl of ramen better is a cigarette. But as I haven't had one of those in nearly 12 years, this is as close to content as I can get.


There was a bunch of stuff on the menu that I'd like to try eventually. There was a lamb bao that I'd like to get my teeth into and a mushroom ramen I'd like to slurp. They serve brunch there on Saturdays and Sundays and I could definitely dig into a bowl of breakfast ramen with bacon broth. Dassara also does some kind of smoked salmon ramen and chicken and waffles. Brunch must be interesting there. And as we know from my review of Talde...I'm a fan of brunch with chopsticks.


So, if you find yourself in need of warm contentedness, get yourself a bowl of ramen. And Dassara is a good place to find it.


Dassara Ramen
271 Smith Street
Brooklyn, NY, 11231

718-643-0781