Ramen by the numbers · Queue
The queue
In four Latin American cities, long waits for a table are part of the ramen night. Almost everywhere else, you walk in.
Waiting for a table
Cheaper bowl, longer line
Google also asks reviewers how long they waited for a table. Out of 5,660 answers, the picture splits in two. In Curitiba, 20% of visits involved a wait of 30 minutes or more; in Belo Horizonte 19%, Mexico City 16% and São Paulo 14%. In the other 13 cities it's 4% or less, and in London, Los Angeles and Singapore it's close to zero.
The cities with queues are also among the least expensive in dollars. That doesn't mean low prices cause lines. Three of the four are in Brazil, where reviews describe small rooms with few seats and a limited number of bowls per day. For 12 of the 26 Brazilian houses with a recurring complaint, that complaint is the queue.
Hollow dots are small samples: Belo Horizonte (57 wait reports) and Mexico City (79). Read the chart as a pattern across 17 cities, not a rule.
See as a table
If you're going to ramen in São Paulo or Curitiba, reviews there point to weekends and peak hours as the longest waits, often 1 to 2 hours. In Lisbon, Barcelona and Toronto, eight in ten reviewers say they didn't wait at all.
Wait times come from a question Google asks and only some reviewers answer, so each city's figure rests on the people who chose to fill it in. Belo Horizonte and Mexico City have fewer than 100 answers each.
Lunch or dinner? Mexico City does lunch
Ramen is mostly dinner: 59% of the 10,893 visits tagged as lunch or dinner were dinner. Mexico City is the exception, with 71% at lunch. Curitiba is the most dinner-minded of the bigger samples, at 72%.
One dot per city, placed by its share of dinner visits. Hollow dot: Belo Horizonte, only 44 reviews tagged the meal.