Our Story

Ide Shoten began as a street cart in Wakayama, Japan, started by Norio Ide’s mother in 1953. Over the decades it grew into one of the most respected ramen shops in the city — known for a deeply layered pork-bone broth and the kind of attention to ingredient that comes from doing one thing for a long time.

Norio Ide carried the shop forward, and a culinary tradition with it.

Koji Takeda traveled to Wakayama in 2002 and trained under Norio Ide at Ide Shoten. He learned the recipes, the techniques, and — more importantly — the patience. Twelve hours of broth. The right noodle for the right bowl. The respect for what came before.

Later that year, Koji opened Gomen Ramen in Stanton, California — the first place in Orange County to serve ramen the Ide Shoten way. He ran the kitchen for over twenty years.

In July 2022, Koji passed all of his recipes and expertise on to the current owner. The bowls haven’t changed. The broth still simmers for twelve hours. The noodles are still pulled in-house. The ramen you eat at Gomen today is the same one Norio Ide taught Koji to make in Wakayama.

Koji has since retired to enjoy the next chapter of his life. The shop carries his work forward — and a lineage that started with a small ramen cart in Wakayama, in 1953.

Pork-bone tonkotsu in three styles — Tonsoy, Tonsalt, Tonmiso — and the Kakuni Deluxe with thick-braised pork belly. Lighter chicken-broth bowls including the Original DX, the spicy Mabo, and the Moyashi. A vegetable-broth VG Lovers for our vegetarian friends. Plus curry, fried rice, karaage, takoyaki, and a sake list.

Twelve hours of broth, every day. That hasn’t changed in seventy years and it isn’t about to.