WALNUT CREEK, CALIFORNIA – What happens when your soup is so good that you can’t accommodate all the people who want to come and eat it?
Well, first you expand beyond Walnut Creek and open a second location in San Ramon. But’s for another story.
Thanks to a new Walnut Creek grant program, though, that bone broth related problem is now a bit more solvable.
If you have been down Bonanza St this week, you may have noticed activity out front of Ramen Hiroshi. Locals tell us that the longtime ramen spot at 1633 Bonanza is preparing a street-front parklet — effectively expanding its seating footprint into the curb lane to create an outdoor dining area.
That kind of buildout is exactly what Walnut Creek’s new Outdoor Dining Program has been encouraging across downtown this year, with grants and fast-track reviews to get parklets up safely and quickly.
Ramen Hiroshi’s Walnut Creek location is a compact, cozy room that fills up fast at peak hours. Adding a parklet should relieve some of that crunch and bring more energy to this block of Bonanza, which has been steadily adding new food options.
In fact, we can be sure of that, because Ramen Hiroshi had a temporary parklet back in 2021. And it worked great!
The restaurant’s site and listings place it squarely on Bonanza between Locust and North Main, a good candidate for a well-designed curbside build.
In recent months, the city has leaned in on outdoor dining after seeing how much life parklets brought to downtown. City Hall rolled out a grant program on July 15, 2025, to help restaurants fund construction.
Sasa, the modern Japanese spot on North Main, was highlighted by the city as a showcase for a polished, privately funded parklet built under the program. The same framework appears to be enabling smaller spots like Ramen Hiroshi to add seating in the right-of-way, pending permits and inspections.
If you are a regular at Hiroshi, you know why this matters. Lines can snake outside on cool evenings when bowls of tonkotsu or shio are exactly what people want. An outdoor platform should make waits shorter and give diners a spot to slurp noodles in the open air — something we have seen succeed on other downtown blocks, and in this exact spot years back.
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As of today — Friday, November 7, 2025 — we have not seen an official city notice naming Ramen Hiroshi’s specific permit by address. But locals have been posting photos online of the new parklet apparently starting construction, which suggests that it’s for real!
Sasa’s parklet is done–you can read all about it here.
