WALNUT CREEK, CALIFORNIA – After months of anticipation and a complete remodel with a full interior teardown, the brand-new Marufuku Ramen in Walnut Creek, California, is finally opening this week.
I got to stop by the night before it opens to the public to try out the food.
Along with my wife and our three kids, we enjoyed a veritable mountain of ramen, dumplings, Japanese starters, drinks, and much else.
Here’s what stood out, and what you need to know about Walnut Creek’s buzziest new ramen spot.
The Buildup
Marufuku Ramen is one of America’s best ramen places. The chain started in Japantown in San Francisco, where the flagship store still often has waits in the 2–3 hour range. I made a pilgrimage to the original location in advance of the Walnut Creek one opening.
Marufuku also has a bit of a surprise: it opened a new restaurant in Dublin, California, earlier this year. So it’s clearly ascending as a local ramen hotspot.
The journey to Walnut Creek took somewhat longer. I visited the future site of Marufuku Ramen, located downtown in Walnut Creek at 1630 Cypress Street, in late 2025.
At the time, the restaurant was under heavy construction. Now, as it prepares to open on May 27, it has been completely transformed.
The façade of what was formerly a pizza place is now adorned with the Marufuku Ramen logo and giant banners covered in Japanese calligraphy.
Stepping inside, you’re greeted with the smallest, most intimate Marufuku Ramen restaurant I’ve seen yet.
The dining room has space for perhaps 50 people, and the patio adds a bit more.
A bar area looks right into an open kitchen, where chefs scurry about through clouds of smoke as they cook your food.
The original Marufuku in Japantown isn’t huge either, but it feels cavernous compared to this tiny space.
There’s something special and exciting about that. This is Marufuku on a smaller scale. It also means that getting a table here will probably feel like a win in and of itself.
Marufuku famously does not take reservations, so the waitlist can stretch for hours. The good news is that you can put your name in in advance before heading over, which you’ll almost certainly want to do when the Walnut Creek spot opens.
The Food
For our press visit, Marufuku brought out a representative sample of pretty much everything on their menu so we could try many of their signature dishes.
We started with multiple skewers.
Marufuku serves A5 Wagyu beef at several locations, including the new Walnut Creek spot. Sweetly seasoned and meltingly delicious, these Wagyu skewers pack a serious punch of flavor.
We also tried pork belly skewers, which were a bit spicier but also tasty.
One of the standout dishes in the appetizer segment was a chicken leg served with bean sprouts and a sweet sauce reminiscent of Peking duck, on a sizzling cast-iron pan.
Crispy and beautifully prepared, this was one of the tastiest things we had all night—ramen included.
We also tried a plate of gyoza dumplings. These were OK, though many of the other dishes stood out more.
We accompanied this with drinks, both for us and for the kids.
One of the signature kids’ drinks at Marufuku is essentially a giant bag filled with sweet, bubbly peach soda, with a rainbow LED ice cube inside lighting the whole thing up like a lantern.
With classics like marble-topped ramune soda, fun and interesting kids’ drinks are something of a tradition in Japan, and these lantern bags felt very much in line with that.
We tried Marufuku’s cocktails as well. I had a mango margarita that was delicious, with a spicy chili rim instead of traditional salt.
My wife got an intense and floral lychee drink with a real piece of lychee fruit suspended in it.
We then moved on to the main course: ramen in abundance.
Our server brought out a big bowl of ramen topped with thin slices of raw A5 Wagyu beef.
She then used a blowtorch to cook the beef right on top of the ramen at our table.
If you’re looking for a dramatic presentation to wow a guest or a date—or something eye-catching for Instagram—you’d be hard-pressed to find something more engaging.
We also tried two other ramens: the signature tonkotsu ramen and a chicken paitan ramen.
Both had a creamy bone broth, thin ramen noodles, a soft-boiled egg, mushrooms, and meat.
The tonkotsu had thin slices of pork belly.
The chicken paitan had an ample amount of chicken.
Marufuku’s broth is one of the key distinguishing features here. Incredibly creamy and rich, the pork bone broth elevates a simple dish into something truly outstanding.
Speaking of outstanding, as I’ve written before, Marufuku has a surprisingly excellent kids’ menu and is much more family-friendly than you might expect from an upscale ramen place.
The kids’ meals include simple ramen with bone broth and noodles, as well as pieces of fried chicken, veggies, a little dessert, and even a juice box.
All this food costs only $10, and kids even get a small toy to play with at the table.
Lots of places price their kids’ meals so high that it’s obvious they don’t really want kids coming in. In contrast, Marufuku welcomes them with open arms, and the tasty, inexpensive kids’ meal makes this an even more appealing place to dine—especially for folks like us who have a lot of kids to feed!
The Verdict
Based on our visit, Marufuku will be a fantastic new addition to the Walnut Creek dining scene.
All of the ramens were excellent, although I found the tonkotsu was my favorite, with its thick and creamy broth.
The simple chicken leg with Chinese five-spice flavor and a thick, sweet sauce was a surprising standout as well.
The kids’ meals make this a truly family-friendly place to visit, and overall prices are reasonable enough to make it the kind of spot you can drop into casually.
The Walnut Creek branch of Marufuku is lovely inside, and I like the smaller, more intimate setting.
The one caveat is that it will probably be very difficult to get a table. You’ll want to plan ahead and put your name in, especially on busy nights.
An excellent drink selection—including the very social-media-friendly lantern sodas—rounds out the offerings here. Marufuku works equally well for a date night, a big family meal with kids, or a dramatic dining experience featuring Wagyu and tableside torching to wow a colleague or your boss.
I expect that when this place opens this week, it’s going to be popular for a long time. Marufuku Walnut Creek opens on Wednesday, May 27 at 11 AM. You can put your name on the waitlist or see the menu on their website.
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