1. Identity and location
Each branch uses a stable place identifier, street address, city, province and coordinates. Same-brand locations are never merged simply because they share a name or website. Closed businesses and non-restaurant wholesalers are excluded from the active directory.
2. Ramen relevance
We classify a restaurant as primary, substantial, limited, not relevant or unknown. Primary and substantial restaurants have clear ramen positioning or multiple ramen-family mains. A sushi, izakaya or fusion restaurant can remain when ramen is a meaningful menu choice; one incidental or unverified mention is treated conservatively.
3. Broth, tare and serving style
“Tonkotsu,” “shoyu,” “miso” and “tsukemen” are separate facts. Tonkotsu describes a pork-bone broth style; shoyu and miso usually describe seasoning bases; tsukemen is a serving format with noodles and dipping broth served separately. A restaurant matches a positive filter only when the wording appears in menu evidence.
4. Menu and price freshness
A menu can be verified current, available but unverified, or unavailable. Price ranges use only observed ramen-family items in Canadian dollars, and the number of priced items is shown. A blank price means “not confirmed,” never “free” or “cheap.”
5. Dietary and production claims
A complete vegan bowl must be explicitly identified; a generic “vegan options” claim does not qualify. Verified halal options require current independent certification evidence; restaurant-declared or third-party claims are labelled separately. “Noodles made on site” requires wording that identifies the production location.
6. Hours, late night and reservations
Late night means listed service until at least 11 p.m. on one or more days. Overnight intervals are preserved as next-day closes. When an official weekly schedule omits a day or contains an impossible value, that day and any dependent late-night conclusion remain unknown. Reservation status distinguishes accepted, required, unavailable and unknown; a booking link alone is not enough to describe every seating policy.
7. Finding missed restaurants
Coverage audits compare normalized names and street addresses with current first-party chain directories and independent restaurant sites across every province and territory. A possible omission is added only when current official evidence establishes an operating branch, a complete address, a useful weekly-hours record and item-level ramen choices. Opening-soon pages, temporary closures, stale domains, image-only menus we cannot verify, conflicting branch identities and broad restaurants with one incidental bowl remain out.
8. Publication and updates
Every claim group carries a source reference, confidence level or verification date, and menu items link to the supporting source IDs shown on the page. Listings are rechecked on a rolling schedule, searchable through canonical URLs and kept ad-free while additional human, schema and content-quality review continues. If you find an error, use the corrections page.