I visited Glasgow's lively new Ramen Dayo restaurant and they changed my mind about noodles

I’ve seen bits of KPop Demon Hunters, with my Generation Alpha nephew, and I promise that I will listen to the new Rosalia album. I’ll occasionally drop the word ‘slay’ into sentences and I pretend that I know what the phrase ‘six-seven’ means.

However, there’s one thing that makes the age gap feel like a chasm.

That’s the fact that everyone under the age of 25 loves noodz. It’s the youths’ favourite food. All of them. They’re champion slurpers. Unlike me.

As a restaurant reviewer, it’s practically a prerequisite that you should enjoy all foodstuffs. And I do. Yes, even tripe.

However, noodles and ramen just don’t do it for me. I can eat them and they’re fine, but they don’t send me into raptures. Can I be cured?

I don’t know, but if anyone can do it, it’s Ramen Dayo.

This Glasgow establishment started as a pop-up restaurant by Central Station back in 2016, when Scotland didn’t have any other ramen presence. Fast forward nearly a decade, and it now has the Ashton Road branch, which opened in 2018, a two-year-old yakitori shack in Finnieston, and the latest addition - a month-old three storey venue on Renfield Street. It seems that Glaswegians can’t get enough of their wares.

I headed along here solo on a chilly day - perfect ramen weather, fans say.

This centre-of-town spot is obviously a popular spot for office workers, as I was tailed into my noon booking by about a dozen suits. I hope they’d packed bibs.

I bagged a table at the windowless rear of the space, with its plastic cherry blossom tree on the table, faux cobbled flooring, corrugated iron and advertising merch tacked onto the walls, plus manic pop on the stereo.

It definitely has nighttime vibes here, but lunch it is.

Unfortunately, on my visit, they were waiting for their alcohol licence. So, in a parallel grog-fuelled universe, I could’ve had a jalapeno margarita, or a lychee saketini, but instead I went for a really good virgin yuzu and mint spritzer (£2.50) that tickled my nose and prepped my palate.

There are 10 types of ramen, from the classic Tokyo style with a light chicken broth, to the scary-sounding Devil, which features four types of chilli. That’s as well as the various katsu and donburi dishes, which would've been more up my street, if I wasn’t here with a job to do.

In the end, I went for the miso black (£13.90), with the addition of an aji-tama soft-boiled egg (£2.50) on top.

After a short wait, the light beside the dumb waiter turned red and there was a delivery for me.

It looked rather lovely, a deep bowlful of simmering lip-coating broth, with a swathe of birling chukamen, and loads of other contents besides.

There were two squares of moss-coloured dried nori slid into the edges, like secret dossier files, as well as two fully submerged half moons of pale chashu pork belly, the bouncily-textured and copper-hued kikurage mushrooms, a flurry of spring onions, and a slosh of burnt garlic oil. Plus that cool and gummy-yolked halved egg.

In the centre, there were also lots of toasted beige garlic chips, which I accidentally imbibed in their entirety on my first bite. Extreme halitosis for the rest of the day, but that was worth it for me. Don’t ask the people I breathed all over. They may still be traumatised.

It was all rather lovely. I switched from chopsticks to renge spoon, and back again.

I twirled, and scooped, dredged, spilled and slurped.

My heart WAS in it. However, as always, it defeated me about half way through.

At least I’d eaten the protein, and the nibbly bits, but I couldn’t do all that broth and noodles.

Perhaps I would have managed more if I hadn’t also ordered their side dish of pumpkin korokke (£6.50), which came as four kewpie-squirted and Panko-crumbed squishy middled croquettes. Or, the piri-kara moyoshi (£3.50), just because I just wanted to see what they could do with beansprouts, and these spindly shoots were lovely and crispy, with soy, rice vinegar and chilli dressing.

So, I didn’t finish, but I had a very pleasant lunch at Ramen Dayo.

I wouldn’t say that I’m now cured of my impassive feelings towards the noodle genre, but I’m one step closer to acquiring a taste for them. Slay.

38 Renfield Street, Glasgow, www.ramendayo.com

Read more: “I had lunch at Edinburgh’s newest and best Japanese restaurant and it was pure magic”

Read more: “I’ve reviewed 43 of Edinburgh’s best new restaurant in 2025, and these are my favourites”

Read more: “I’m property hunting and you can buy an Edinburgh hovel for the same price as a Glasgow palace”