What’s in the bowl

Which broth each house is known for, city by city, and what people actually talk about when they review ramen.

Specialty by city

Tonkotsu nearly everywhere

For each of the 233 ramen houses we analyzed, our reading of reviews identified one main specialty: the broth the house is known for. Across all 17 cities, 63% specialize in tonkotsu, the creamy pork-bone broth. Miso follows with 18%, shoyu with 14% and shio with 3%.

This is about specialty, not menu. When New York shows 100% tonkotsu and 0% shoyu, it means every house in our sample is known first for its tonkotsu, not that you can't order a shoyu bowl there. Many houses serve three or four styles.

A few cities have their own accent. In Curitiba, 56% of the houses specialize in shoyu. In Madrid, miso leads with 41%, ahead of tonkotsu at 35%. Melbourne and Vancouver lean miso more than most, at 30% each.

Mexico City's 50% miso comes from only 4 houses, and Belo Horizonte has 3, so those rows say more about the few houses we read than about the whole city.

Each cell: share of the city's ramen houses whose main specialty is that style, with the count below. Square area follows the share. Hollow squares: fewer than 5 houses analyzed.

See as a table

What people talk about

It's the broth

2.7×

We also counted which part of the experience reviews talk about. Broth takes 37% of all mentions, 2.7 times as many as noodles (3,338 against 1,240). Atmosphere and service come second, at 28%.

For someone choosing where to eat, that's a useful hint: when reviewers praise or criticize a ramen house, they're mostly talking about the soup. Noodles, chashu and toppings get far fewer words. And atmosphere and service at 28% is a reminder that a ramen night isn't only the bowl: the counter, the wait and the staff shape how people remember it.

Source: share of mentions of each part of the experience in reviews of 233 ramen houses, read with the help of AI (the same reading behind our selection). The 2.7× uses raw counts.