Philadephia's Best Ramen Shop

The Daily Meal recently published our 25 Best Ramen Shops in America for 2014, and in order to compile our ranking, we contacted the leading culinary authorities around the country to ask them about their personal favorite shops are (sticking to restaurants that specialize in ramen and noodles as oppose to you sushi bars with one bowl of ramen on the menu), and we supplemented those suggestions with ramen shops featured in local reviews and also consulted pre-existing local rankings. We then took that list of more than 100 shops from across the country and concocted a survey, with the shops separated by region. We invited our group of trusted panelists (made up of chefs, bloggers, journalists, and other culinary authorities) to vote for their favorites, and more than 30, including the Los Angeles Times' Jonathan Gold and our fleet of city editors, cast their votes. In the end there was one clear winner, but the top shops aren't all found in ramen hotspots like New York and the Bay Area; there's great ramen all over America, including Philadelphia.

Philly's best ramen shop, Hiro claims that it's on "an endless search for the soul of Japan." They're certainly getting pretty close, as their ramen is out of this world. There's porky shoyu ramen, topped with torched-to-order pork belly, toothsome noodles, marinated egg, chili paste, and soy sauce, a vegetarian option with corn, cabbage, and nori, and a special bowl that changes a couple times a week and consists of basically whatever chef/owner Dan Zhao can dream of, which is certainly a whole lot of fun.

Hiro is the only ramen shop in Philadelphia to make our list, so it's unequivocally the best ramen shop in Philadelphia this year.

Kate Kolenda is the Restaurant/City Guide Editor at The Daily Meal. Follow her on Twitter @BeefWerky and @theconversant.