Ivan Ramen opens a second London site on Askew Road
A year after its Farringdon debut, Ivan Orkin's noodle shop is doubling up near Shepherd's Bush with a bigger room and a mid-December katsu curry menu.
Ivan Ramen Askew Road, the brand's second permanent London restaurant, opens near Shepherd's Bush later this month. The 28-cover room is slightly larger than the 26-seat Farringdon original and arrives almost exactly a year after that first UK site opened.
Like Farringdon, the Askew Road shop is built with Sessions, the food brand growth platform that has backed Ivan Ramen's push into the UK. Counter seats face the kitchen, with banquettes along one wall and the brand's signature manga lightbox above the pass.
The design draws on two references at once: Tokyo's compact ramen bars and the diners of Orkin's native New York, a combination that has defined the brand since its Manhattan and Tokyo shops first opened.
London has embraced Ivan Ramen from the very beginning.
Launch dishes include karaage, crispy nasu and four ramen styles: shoyu, spicy miso, red chilli and tonkotsu. A katsu curry is due to join the menu in mid-December, giving the new site a slightly broader offer than Farringdon carried at launch.
“London has embraced Ivan Ramen from the very beginning,” Orkin said of the expansion, a reference to the queues that met the Farringdon opening in November 2025 after pop-ups in Brighton and London in 2023.
A second site, a year on
Farringdon was Ivan Ramen's first permanent UK restaurant and the base from which Sessions and Orkin tested whether London's appetite for the brand would hold beyond a residency. A year on, Askew Road is the answer: a second room, in a different part of the city, built to the same format.
Orkin made his name with two ramen shops in Tokyo before opening two more under the Ivan Ramen name in New York, a route that took in a turn on Netflix's Chef's Table in 2017 and gave the brand a following well beyond either city.
West London gets its own queue
Shepherd's Bush has filled out with openings this year, and Forbici's arrival at London Bridge in October is one sign of how much London's independent restaurant scene has been expanding site by site rather than through a single wave.
Whether Askew Road draws the same queues Farringdon did will depend on how far west diners are willing to travel for a bowl of ramen, but the larger room and broadened menu suggest Ivan Ramen is treating London as a market for a chain, not a one-off.
