City OKs operations for liquor license at City Ramen
Sake, beer and wine will soon be available
Sake, beer and wine will soon be coming to the City Ramen restaurant in downtown Royal Oak.
City Ramen opened in October after researching and developing a menu with Tomoharu Shono, a Michelinstarred chef in Tokyo.
This week Royal Oak city commissioners approved operations plans necessary for the restaurant to use a liquor license.
State laws no longer require local approval of liquor license transfers into a community. Royal Oak police Lt. Keith Spencer did a report on the restaurant’s operations and liquor license.
Police Chief Corrigan O’Donohue said his department is unopposed to the eatery operating with a liquor license.
City Ramen, 321 S. Main Street, is open from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Wednesday through Monday and is owned by Scott R. Purdon and Tracy Dalzell.
They “have spent $750,000 on the furniture, fixtures, equipment and inventory during the original construction of the (restaurant) space,” O’Donohue told
city commissioners.
Neither of the two owners have any experience running a liquor-licensed and have hired Bill Keros as the general manager of City Ramen.
The Keros family owned the Lafayette Coney Island in Detroit after Keros’ father took it over in 1970. Keros worked there for several years and has experience operating a restaurant with a liquor license, Lt. Spencer said in his report.
“We’re happy to be in Royal Oak,” Purdon told city commissioners Monday. “We’ve had a lot of great feedback and hope to be open for 50 years.”
Responding to a city commission question, Purdon said he is unsure of when he might open City Ramen for lunch customers.
Purdon co-founded and was CEO of an IT business in Troy until last year and now owns an investment company, Sunnyknoll Ventures, LLC.
Dalzell has been a software engineer for the past 25 years and owns a software consulting company.
City Ramen has a display kitchen where customers can watch chefs put together Ramen and other dishes.
Ramen is made with quick- cooking egg noodles served in a base of broth with meat, vegetables and other ingredients.
The restaurant also serves a vegetarian ramen soup and specializes five ramen noodle dishes.
Besides the Ramen dishes, the restaurant offers Gyoza, a Japanese dumpling, sticky pork ribs marinated in ponzu, edamame and small Japanese salads.
The restaurant covers 2,100 square feet, with just over half of that used for customers.
There is seating for 43 patrons in the eatery located just north of Fourth Street.
City Ramen has been operating with a certificate of occupancy. Police said they will set the overall seating capacity for the restaurant’s liquor license after getting recommendations from the fire and building departments.
The owners are leasing their building space from FLD Properties in Sagamore Hills, Ohio for about $4,500 a month, police said, and paid $80,000 for the liquor license from Mod Pizza in Rochester Hills.