Ramen Chef

“Ramen Chef” is a memory-based card game from Heldberg Games, played here by Jack (8.) and a now fully recovered Toby (5) after his dramatic fall down the stairs a few weeks ago. This also means I should be able to get back to a more regular upload schedule as I have been fairly content-light the last week or so 

“Ramen Chef” is a fairly simple pairs matching game, but with a small twist that makes this an interesting package. Produced by Heldberg Games, a company that has become a firm favourite of mine over the last month or so, they produce fairly simple yet generally adult-themed games. They are a German company, but all of their games have a Japanese twist to them.

In “Ramen Chef,” there is a grid of nine ingredients, and essentially, you take turns to try and match pairs, much like any pair-matching game. But the slight twist is that the tokens are double-sided. Therefore, you can remember what is on different sides and manipulate the tokens in such a way as to allow you to score when it’s your turn.

As with most Heldburg games, “Ramen Chef” comes with some nice extras: some nicely printed wooden meeples, some menus that tell you the names of the ingredients in Japanese, and a pair of chopsticks that have absolutely no use at all.

I am a big fan of the aesthetic of their games that come in cardboard screen-printed-type packaging and have a really nice brown paper feel to them all. I know this feeling is not completely held by everyone, and Chloe Fleur did have some issues with the dust created when you snap the tokens off of the boards.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked “Ramen Chef,” but to be honest, it’s not unique enough to warrant paying the money compared to what any other pair-matching game would do. You could equally recreate this by getting two copies of a pair-matching game of a theme that you like and then glueing two sets of the tokens
together.

Disclaimer: A copy of “Ramen Chef” was provided for the purpose of review by Heldberg Games via the BoardGame Review Network UK, but my thoughts and opinions are my own. Trying to get a five and eight-year-old to lie, you will find is very difficult.

Please check out my review of “Catch the Wave,” another game of theirs that I absolutely loved.