Pasta Ramen in Montclair is the hottest restaurant in NJ. Is it really that good?

Good luck getting a reservation at acclaimed chef Robbie Felice's Pasta Ramen, arguably the hottest restaurant in North Jersey, if not New Jersey. Since the wildly popular, dimly lit, majorly hip and fashionably loud Japanese-Italian BYOB opened seven months ago, monthly reservations have sold out in less than 15 minutes on the first day of the month they are released online.

Good luck, too, deciphering the menu. A few nights after my first visit, a Montclair friend, who somehow was able to snag a table, sent an SOS email: "I'm flummoxed by their menu. Any advice?"

Felice is well aware that he is treading in unfamiliar culinary territory.

"Who else is doing this in Jersey?" he said when I called to discuss this review. A rhetorical question.

Until recently, to help out flummoxed diners, Felice had highlighted on the menu the dishes he thought were the best introductions to his nascent cuisine with the restaurant's logo (crossed chopsticks, a hint of a red plate). The cuisine is called "Wafu Italian" — Wafu means “in the Japanese style” — and it is served in only five (5!) restaurants nationwide.

And just to make things a bit more mystifying, there's no ordinary sign outside Pasta Ramen (yup, good luck finding the place), just the logo projected onto the sidewalk.

So what can you expect, should you secure a seat, find the joint and be able to interpret the menu?

Thumping hip-hop music, young tattooed servers, tightly packed tables and dishes that are, with few exceptions, wildly delicious, highly creative, boldly different and beautifully plated — if not, alas, always grand slams.

Among the runaway winners was the burrata, one of the two most expensive offerings on the menu ($49); the other is a 100-day, dry-aged Japanese A5 Wagyu, one of the world's most exquisite steaks ($33/ounce with a two-ounce minimum, which I couldn't justify ordering, even though my employer was footing the bill).

Leave it to Felice, a James Beard-nominated rising-star chef who also owns award-winning Italian restaurants Osteria Crescendo in Westwood and Viaggio in Wayne, to inject the ball of gooey cream-filled cheese with a slightly tart, subtly sweet teriyaki sauce and then present it lounging in a gorgeous pool of Sicilian olive oil, the cheese gilded with caviar and gold leaf. Opulent? Perhaps. Delicious? For sure.

Felice is known for his sublime calamari at Viaggio and Crescendo, drenched in lemon butter flavored with shallots and chili. His equally sublime super-crispy, super-tender calamari at Pasta Ramen gets deliciously "Wafu"-ed, thanks to a creamy aioli flavored with miso and Calabrian chili oil as well as Japanese eel sauce seasoned with basil. Add to all that nutty (Italian) sesame seeds and sweet (Japanese) shishito peppers, and you've got another winner.

Another culinary champ is the ramen shrimp scampi — tender, teeny shrimp lavished in a garlicky-buttery ponzu sauce luxuriating in a bed of thick, chewy temomi ramen noodles. The dish's floral aroma alone deserves a trophy.

As for the chicken katsu ramen, a warning: If you are a fan of crazy rich, viscous broth, overlook it at your own peril. The poured-tableside broth, a warm swimming pool for sun-dried tomatoes, fried wood ear mushrooms, fried capers and hard-boiled eggs, exuded so much umami, it easily could have passed as a Jewish grandma's brisket...in liquid form. And no worries: the crispy slices of fried chicken cutlets were served on the side. Phew, sogginess averted, deliciousness upheld.

According to Felice, two of his bestselling dishes are the cacio e pepe gyoza and the ramen carbonara. They were my least favorite dishes. The "pepe" in the cacio e pepe seemed to be MIA and the dumpling too thick and similarly too bland. And the carbonara? Appreciated the al dente noodles, the gooey egg yolk, the nutty sesame seeds, and the somewhat spicy Japanese spice blend togarashi. But the noodles were drowned in an absurdly rich parmesan sauce that seemed like overkill.

The chicken bao and tofu bao also failed to score big. Nothing wrong with what was between the buns — the chicken was crisp and moist and slathered with a bold basil-centric pesto; the tofu was creamy and thick with a nice chili-garlic kick. But the buns were too big and too bland.

More typical of the chef's wide-ranging skills was the perfectly cooked, nicely flaky black cod sheathed in a sexy-looking layer of thin radish slices. The fish was served with a summery fennel salad laced with a heady, lemony vinaigrette that Felice should consider selling by the bottle.

The sushi-grade kanpachi (aka, amberjack) crudo hit most every taste sensation: sweet, salty and spicy, thanks to a citrusy fennel ponzu tinged with Japanese chili paste and — why not? — Sambucca.

Love the funky idea of dessert (there's only one offered): zeppole bao bun donuts served in a brown paper bag in which you'll also find a Nutella dipping sauce. Eat them on your way home, as you might in Italy. And pat yourself on the back for managing to land a table at the most coveted dining room in our region and for being adventurous enough to try a novel, innovative cuisine most Americans have yet to hear of, let alone savor.

Speaking of adventurous: Gotta hand it to Robbie Felice for trying something so new in a state that is, sadly, not known for culinary innovation. What's more, Felice mostly nails it.

Give the man a James Beard award already. Please.

Pasta Ramen

Go: 6 S. Fullerton Ave., Montclair; no phone. pastaramen.com

Open: 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Friday through Saturday; 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday.

Good for:  Adventurous food lovers

Recommended dishes: Injected burrata and kaluga caviar, kanpachi crudo, calamari fritti, black cod, chicken katsu and temomi ramen shrimp scampi

Drinks: BYOB.

Reservations: Walk-ins are accepted, but good luck. Make a reservation!

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Pasta Ramen in Montclair NJ: Is restaurant worth the hype?