Restaurant Porn is a regular column of daydreams presented as a means to introduce Vancouver diners and designers to concepts, looks, and fully-formed ideas that they might draw an inkling of inspiration from. We do our best to pair the foreign rooms with local addresses so as to let everyone in on the daydream.

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(via) One of Vancouver’s core assets as a food city is its high number of Japanese eateries. Our sushi game runs the spectrum from cheap to high end, and our izakayas are appropriately off the hook. We also do ramen like it’s nobody’s business, probably better than any other city in North America. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement, especially with design. A place might have the broth dialled and the noodles just right, but does it make you want to hang around? Probably not. Style and comfort have never been the hallmarks of a ramen joint. It’s usually a purely transactional experience. You get in, you slurp, maybe go big with a kaedama knot of extra noodles, perhaps knock back a beer, and then you get the fuck out. You seldom look around and say, “Oooh, pretty…”

It looks to be very different at Shyo Ryu Ken. Located in Osaka’s busy, white collar district of Kyobashi, the look of the 2,000 sqft ramen restaurant – all plywood, plaster, steel and glass – was inspired by the pointed Nagaya roofs (Japanese tenement housing) and is split into two zones: a row of semi-private, house-like booths and a long dining bar that faces the action of the kitchen. When it’s at its most raucous, it’s meant to resemble a bustling Nagaya street scene. We’d take a version of it in Vancouver somewhere away from the ramen-dominated Robson/Denman nexus. We’re thinking on the north side of Venables between Clark and Commercial Drive.

Photograph by Hirokazu Matsuoka