Japanese vegan restaurant Towzen is pushing boundaries at its third international offshoot, in Sydney, with ramen that incorporates Thai green curry and Sichuan-style flavours.

December 28, 2025

Japanese$

There is a heatwave on, yet I’m queueing for ramen in Sydney’s CBD. Sure, the footpath is toasting my shoes and my clothes are liquefying, but I’ve committed to sweating further over a hot bowl of broth. It’s not just me: the line stretches half an hour long. I’m outside Australia’s first outpost for Towzen, a well-established vegan ramen restaurant from Japan. Sydney’s location opened in July and has generated long-distance buzz: in the line, I meet an English tourist and Canberra visitors who’ve sought out Towzen’s steamy bowls.

Ironically, there was no queueing (or unflattering sweating) required when I visited Towzen’s original Kyoto location some years back. Maybe because it’s far from the city and requires two public transport connections (still, the trip is shorter than my ramen wait in Sydney). Towzen opened in 2004 and became known for founder Minoru Yonekawa’s soy-milk ramen. Towzen Sydney serves his signature noodle broth and it’s even better than the one I sipped in Kyoto. It’s nutty, vegetable-rich and zings with sansho pepper. Even the bitter rocket leaves add a welcoming charge of contrast. In Kyoto, my bowl was filled with gloopy, green chlorella noodles (something I ordered out of curiosity), whereas Sydney serves standard wheat strands in the Goldilocks zone: not too thick or thin, slurpable and broth-compatible.

Thai green curry ramen.James Brickwood

Sydney’s Towzen sits in a 140-year-old heritage building and evokes Japan with its bonsai trees, teapot collections and soothing piano instrumentals: it’s “respite for the bustling city workers that come in for an hour or so”, says co-owner Daryl Chan. This cool and calming refuge, like the tree-lined original, offers relief for sweaty queuers like me. Also refreshing? Towzen’s chilled tofu pooled in sesame-rich dressing, cold soy pudding drizzled with caramel-like kuromitsu (Japanese black sugar) and icy drinks: everyone orders matcha-strawberry lattes, but citrus-spiked yuzu sodas, smoky hojicha brews and nutty black sesame beverages are also summer-worthy.

This is Towzen’s third international offshoot, following sites in Malaysia and Indonesia. Chan, a long-time vegetarian, believes “it’s so hard” to find plant-based Sydney restaurants outside Cabramatta and Newtown. The CBD, with its hotbed of steakhouses, is a smart place for setting up.

Our menu notably differs from Kyoto’s. “Australia’s a multicultural country,” Chan says. So there’s ramen with Thai green curry and Sichuan-style flavours. Towzen isn’t here to challenge collagen-thick bowls of porky tonkotsu or other meaty staples, but similar dedication goes into broths. Most are developed overnight, using stock-bolstering ingredients such as mushrooms, nutty pastes and tingly spices. Top-selling tantanmen highlights an oyster mushroom’s butterfly-like sprawl, salty soy “mince” on a lilypad-like disc of charred zucchini and soup punchy with chilli oil, sesame and peanut pastes. Thai green curry ramen is aptly spicy and vegetable-loaded, while mushroom shoyu ramen, drizzled with chanterelle oil, is pretty light by comparison.