Recently in Steamy Ramen Goodness Category

I spent my last hour in Japan (being in the lounge doesn't count, because since you clear passport control, you're technically "not" in Japan) puttering in 東京駅.

It's been a while since I've needed to go through Tokyo Station on the way to NRT. These past few visits I've been going through Shinjuku Station since it's closer to where I stay during my visits. There's a lot happening in Tokyo Station and the surrounding Marounouchi neighborhood. For one, Tokyo Station has a left baggage service in the basement close to the NE'X tracks so you can check your bag and putter around for the day before making the long slog to NRT. Although both stations have lockers, they won't swallow a 26" roller, that's why it's nice to have the left baggage service at Tokyo Station because Shinjuku doesn't have it. Another bright spot of Marunouchi are the many nice restaurants in the area that includes a branch of A16 and a Cafe that's part of Joel Robuchon's restaurant chains.

Almost feels like being in Paris. Of course, we ARE in Marunouchi...

The best food I found though was inside Tokyo Station itself. There's a branch of Mutsumi-ya in a special Tokyo Ramen Street section of the basement. I stumbled upon this gem as I was wandering around semi-lost for a new place to eat. Mutsumi-ya is a Hokkaido based chain as evidenced by their flagship bowl of corn-butter ramen.

It was very oishii! Corn and butter in the broth...

Unlike most Hokkaido style ramen I've had, this bowl has the satisfying food buzz that you get with good Hakata style ramen. The broth was rich and hearty and very satisfying. And unusually for Hokkaido ramen, the noodles were firm and has the feel of quality. It's easy to mass produce thick noodles (which Hokkaido ramen uses) and many shops cheat with store bought noodles. I don't think Mutsumi-ya does that. It's that good.

The restaurant itself is not designed for lingering; rather it's all about eating and going.

Here's some of their other menu offerings and some credentials

Contrary to popular belief, this blog is NOT a ramen blog! Or rather, this blog is not JUST a ramen blog...

That being said, here's a useful site that explains the different styles of ramen that's out there. Eventually, this will go onto the blogroll once I find a good template I can tweak without messing it up.

*hat tip to Tastespotting*

After my first visit to Ippudo Shibuya back in March, I vowed to eat this delicious ramen again! Even if I had to travel all the way to New York! It's only 5+ hours to JFK from SFO...

So last weekend, I did that. Flew to New York. To eat and drink. Actually, I was in New York for a different event and wound up with some time on Sunday morning to visit Ippudo NY. It's just north of Astor Place station on the 6 line. Astor Place should be renamed to "ramen place" because this is the station that leads to St. Mark's place and the East Village. Or as I call it, "ramen central" for the United States. All the good ramen shops are here in this small area of Manhattan (with the sole exception of Ichiran, which has opened up a branch in Greenpoint), both home grown (Momofuku) and from Japan (Ichiran).

There's no doubt about where you are when you see the front door. It has that rustic feel like the Tokyo location. Until you actually walk through the front door.

As you walk through these doors, you will be transported to Japan...

Then all of a sudden, it's not rustic anymore. It's very modern in a neo-japonesque kinda way.

How modern! How big! How modern!

As with all things American, it's big! Compared to the Shibuya location, it's at least four times as big. Comfortable chairs and big tables. However, the menu is roughly the same. Which is a good thing. This time I went for the Akamaru Shin-Aji with the signature red glob of pork fat in the middle of the bowl.

the noodles are hiding under the broth...

You're supposed to stir it up. This is how the broth changes after you stir it up. And I was transported back to Japan and better days. Springy noodles. Rich pork fat reinforced broth. Wonderfully tender (albeit a bit small) slices of roast pork. Garlic and negi in excellent proportions. And a second helping of noodles. Yes, I was very happy consuming lunch. After I finished my bowl, I was experiencing pork overload. Didn't mesh too well with the slight hangover I was nursing.

orangish porky broth goodness!

Ippudo NY has a cash bar in the front of the restaurant that has various beers (Kirin, Sapporo) on tap as well as Yebisu in bottles and featured sakes.

Now that's a lotta bowls...

The hella cool thing is that they have a 2 for $6 happy hour beer deal during the week. That includes Yebisu! I had one to balance out my system, which was dealing with a wine induced sneaky hangover and tonkotsu broth overload when I needed to go to the bathroom, which was downstairs. Besides the bathrooms being nice, I discovered something else on my trip to the bathroom...

Two long glass slits next to doors that say "private". What are they doing inside these mysterious rooms? Why they're making broth! And noodles! From scratch!

Mmmm...broth!

Here's the dough...

that turns into noodles in your soup!

So, yes you can get authentic Hakata ramen in the United States. Well, you can get authentic Hakata ramen in New York. This is a "must visit" place when you're here on the island.

Ippudo NY
65 4th Avenue
New York, NY 10003
1-212-388-0088
http://www.ippudo.com/ny

During my recent Tokyo visit (late March), one of my friends sent me an email clipping from Urbandaddy that was about a Japan based ramen chain that was opening up a branch in the East Village. I skimmed over the article ("hmm, that's interesting. New York gets ALL the good food") and then left the hostel for the day. Later that night, I would be one of 100 or so A's fans inside Tokyo Dome watching the A's lose to the Red Sox, much to the delight of the rest of the crowd inside.

I met up with my friend Takeshi later that night after the game. He told me over the phone that he wanted to take me to one of his favorite ramen shops that's nearby his work. So I jumped on the Yamanote and got off at Ebisu. It was a 10 minute walk to the Shibuya branch of Ippudo.

Ippudo is a Fukuoka based ramen chain that specializes in Hakata style ramen. If you've been patient and are a long time reader of my ramblings, you don't need an introduction to the creamy, decadent richness of Hakata Ramen. Ippudo is considered by many as being one of the top purveyors of Hakata Ramen in Japan.

So we walked inside and took a seat. Ordered from the small menu. The ramen came out. Takeshi ordered the standard Akamaru Shin-Aji, with a big glob of red pork fat in the middle to be stirred into the broth for that extra measure of pork flavor goodness.

See that red glob? You stir it into the broth...

I, being the purist, ordered the Shiromaru Moto-Aji, which is a pure white broth (no extra pork fat) with pork belly. Delish! The garlic and the negi add a nice kick to the broth which should be classified as a a food group. The noodles were springy and tasted fresh and snappy. They were proper Hakata style, meaning thin egg noodles. Yum!

Look at this bowl. Now imagine it empty 20 minutes later. Burp.

Even at 2200 on a weeknight, Ippudo was 80% full, with a rustic old-school kind of feeling. They were definitely going for the nostalgic look of "back in the day". It was a great nightcap as this Tokyo trip was winding down.

As we were leaving the restaurant, I picked this up.

Ippudo was opening a location in the East Village! Then my brain began to wake up. When I got home, I pulled up that email that my friend sent me. And yes, it was about the New York location of Ippudo opening up. What were the chances of that? I get an email about Ippudo NY opening up in the morning and I wind up at Ippudo Shibuya at night with a flyer about Ippudo NY opening up.

Talk about coinkidinks...

Ippudo
1-3-13 Hiroo
Shibuya-Ku, Tokyo
03-5420-2225
http://www.ippudo.com

It's a good thing (at least here in the States) that a restaurant has to move to bigger quarters because they're just "that" busy. Santa moved over the Thanksgiving break last year.

Yes, it's bigger! But where's the soul?

The old Santa Ramen was on B Street where parking was a serious pain. The new Santa Ramen is now in a mini mall on El Camino just south of the 92. Easier to get to but requires a commitment because it's 30 miles away from San Francisco. On the plus side, there's a Nijiya Market directly across the lot from Santa so you can go grocery shopping. Remember the 29th is "Meat Day"!

In a mini-mall! Next to the Shoe Pavillion...

The big fear when a restaurant moves to new digs is that the food will not be up to par as the old place was. Although these new digs lacks the character of the old place, I'm happy to say that the basics of Santa (tonkotsu ramen) is still its old decadent rich self.

The old standby when there's no stewed pork. Still good!

The menu has been enlarged with a greater selection of appetizers than before. My bud and I had karaage and fried squid. But the big draw is the ramen with the milky, rich, indulgent tonkotsu broth! I mean look at the broth and the oil floating on top!

OK, so it's "fat" floating on top. That's what makes it taste good!

Santa has brought much of the old shop with them. The broth is still good. The food is still good. The noodles are still the thick kind and you have to special order 玉子 to go with your ramen. You don't have to sign the waiting list anymore on non-peak days; it's first come first serve now. But one constant still remains, to remind you that you ARE at Santa Ramen...

AAAAAAUUGGGGHHHHH! NOTFAIRNOTFAIRNOTFAIR!

You still need to get here early for stewed pork. I missed it this visit by 10 bloody minutes!!! *pout pout pout*

But I shall return!!!

Santa Ramen
1944 El Camino Real
San Mateo CA 94403
650-344-5918

This is always a welcome sight in my ramen-scarce area. This is Majikku Ramen in Daly City. It's in that mall on Skyline where Ranch 99 and the KFC is. If you're Asian and you live in San Francisco, chances are you know where this is and can get here blindfolded.

New Ramen shop! Sorta of in my area...

The sign above usually means, "come in and eat". So I went this evening.

It was pretty busy because it was dinner time

The place had chill out lounge music which would be great for the kind of bars I like to frequent, but even though it's not really ramen shop music, it worked with the decor which is very modern-y and new. That's fine since this place has been open for only a few months.

Many things can make or break a ramen shop besides the actual food. The ramen is of course, the reason you go to a ramen shop but the service, the variety of food (or lack thereof) and the atmosphere can also make a place worthwhile.

Or it can break a place.

First the good stuff. Decent tonkotsu broth. Good flavor without the MSG hangover.

Here's another added (and rare) feature here. Cha siu slices that are rich, flavourful and hella tender! The noodles were decently springy. I think I was here on a good night.

Makes your mouth water, dun it?

Before the ramen showed up, ordered some chicken yakatori and wasabi chicken from the Robata-Yaki menu. Both very good and worthy of piss alley in Shinjuku.

Great with beer!

Now the not so great. The miso ramen was extremely oversalted to the point of causing a salt/msg headache. Canned bamboo shoots in both bowls were rubbery and limp. But at least the noodles and cha siu kept their ramen-y goodness. Both bowls also came out not as hot as I'd like. My miso ramen friend didn't have problems with the warmth of the bowl so that may be a matter of personal preference.

The bowl looks good...and the cha siu still rox!

Now so far, we have good appetizers and passable ramen. Before I continue, I should mention that they have lots of free parking. Here's where the place falls flat on its face. The service is bad. It's the kind of service that you'd expect in a typical Chinese restaurant here. No, I'll go further than that. It genuinely seemed like they were very disinterested in doing their jobs. There was no greeting from the waitstaff when we signed in and waited for our wall-facing counter seat. Service was incredibly slow despite the fact it was the dinner hour.

Come here if you've got the craving for ramen/izakaya food. Just don't expect the experience and treatment that you'd usually get from one of these places. Order simply, eat and leave. Also interesting...there were no Japanese diners or staff inside...

Majikku Ramen
240 Skyline Plaza
Daly City CA 94015
650-756-2988

Heartbreak that many ramen fans in the "bay area" know all too well...

You MUST MUST get to Santa Ramen before they open at 1730 to join the queue! Otherwise, you'll never be able to taste the ultimate decadence of stewed pork and instead you'll have to settle for the plain old decadence of tonkotsu cha-siu ramen instead.

It's good stuff, but it's not the good GOOD stuff...

There are noodles down there, lurking under the broth.

In the interest of "fair and balanced" ramen blogging, here's an order of miso ramen

Santa DOES have a sense of humor, as evidenced by the sign below.

Guess too many people were asking stupid questions so they had to put up a sign. Bet they're still fielding this stupid question, probably asked by stupid people that don't read...

WAHAHAHAHAHAH

Santa's moving to just south of the 92 on El Camino Real. That means easier parking and a Nijiya Market to buy stuff in after your large helping of steam ramen goodness! They're not sure about when yet, but your roving correspondent visited the site and saw stockpots the size of small Tokyo apartments in the front, so they may be opening up before the end of the year...

Maybe I should elaborate. Food Courts in American malls are generally bad. I mean, if a restaurant is in the local mall's food court, chances are that the food is, ahem, pedestrian. Food meant for the masses and designed to appeal to people from Sioux City to Santa Clarita. And the less said about "ethnic" food chains that almost exclusively exist in food courts, the better. Think Panda Express or Sbarro's or even Wolfgang Puck Express for a better idea of what I'm trying to get across here.

You can find good food in here (besides the groceries)

Food Courts in ethnic (read: not Safeway, Vons, Whole Foods or the like) grocery stores however, can be really good. Hell, even my beloved hawker centres in Singapore can be considered "food courts" minus the air-con. If you've got air-con, you then become an indoor food court.

Here in Costa Mesa, you have an udon place, a donburi place and a ramen place and a couple of other places tucked away inside this Mitsuwa Marketplace. Sometimes they are even part of a (gasp!) chain.

There's good eats in this food court. Really.

Santouka Ramen in the food court

In Santouka’s case, they ARE part of a chain of ramen restaurants. From Tokyo. Does that still make them an evil chain? Probably not. Does their ramen deserve the hype? Well, that’s what I’m here to find out, 10 minutes away from John Wayne Airport (SNA), having a late lunch.

What to eat? How about that one on the left bottom corner?

According to ramenramenramen.net and rameniac, they’re part of a Tokyo based chain that is expanding in Southern California. Now I’m normally a Kyushu-men (Tonkotsu broth & stewed pork) kinda guy and this will be the first time I’ve had Ashikawa ramen (pork bone & seafood stock), which hails from Hokkaido. I ordered the #7, the shio ramen combo with the noodles and broth in a bowl and the pork and other condiments on the side (Sally would appreciate that), leaving the springy ramen noodles swimming in the surprisingly light shio broth with sesame seeds by itself. It was great! Although you can't really tell the greatness by that simple statement because it's not in ALL CAPS and in 60 point strong text, because that would be tacky. When you assemble your #7, drop the chasiu into the broth and then bury it under some noodles for a minute to warm it up. Then chew slowly, letting the buttery, meaty goodness coat your tongue before you let it slowly slide down your gullet. So there's something good in THIS food court. Eat here!

The number seven comes with noodles & broth separate from the sides...

...so you can make your own bowl of shio ramen!

If this is what "chain restaurants" can be like, let’s have MORE Japanese food chains in supermarkets!! Santouka's also in West LA too.

Santouka Ramen (inside the Mitsuwa Supermarket)
665 Paularino Avenue
Costa Mesa CA 92676
714-434-1101

My brief visit to Waikiki Beach (5 hours total) over 5 days in O'ahu demonstrates my aversion to known tourist traps. But first, some clarification...

There IS a difference between a tourist trap and a tourist attraction. A tourist trap can be an attraction that has allowed the area surrounding it to get all whored out with businesses whose sole purpose is to relieve dumb tourists from their money, regardless of taste or cost, because they are there.

Examples: Waikiki Beach, Great Wall of China (Mutanyu Section), Fisherman's Wharf (San Francisco).

A tourist attraction is an place or item of interest where the "whoring out" that a tourist trap has is either non existent or unnecessary for the place or item of interest to exist as an attraction.

Examples: USS Arizona Memorial, USS Missouri, Diamond Head, North Shore.

I don't think you can accuse the above Hawaiian attractions of being "whored out" or "tourist traps".

Sometimes there are reasons to brave tourist traps. In some cases, it's the only way to visit an ancient wonder (Great Wall) and in other cases, it's the businesses that are part of the tourist trap area. In San Francisco, the only reason to go down there (if you live here) is that the Wharf has The City's only (ONLY) In & Out Burger and Hooters. In Waikiki Beach, there's a firing range (yep) and several good ramen shops. And like the idiot that I am, I went to Waikiki Beach to eat ramen...

The first shop I hit was on my second night in O'ahu. Ezogiku Ramen is a chain of ramen shops that are scattered all over O'ahu along with the original shops in Tokyo and Sapporo.

Yes, I got the addresses to the shops in Japan and they're on my "to eat" list now.

As you walk in, it ain't glam, it ain't frou frou, it's good ramen and beer!

After reading about the history of Ezogiku and its Japanese roots, I asked the waitress (who was bringing me a beer, yeay!) what the specialty of the house was.

Waitress: Miso Ramen
Me: One please!

I'm very easy to please!

The miso had that "zing" that we all love in our miso ramen. Or maybe that was a touch too much MSG. But in either case, it was very well done. The noodles were snappy and the scallions were good too. The slice of cha siu was cold, like it was taken out of an icebox and put onto the bowl and the broth could have been a bit warmer.

Many of the customers inside the shop were Japanese and if I closed my eyes while slurping down the noodles in my bowl, I could imagine I was in Tokyo in some unknown ramen shop. Bliss. Until a squad of PRC tourists came in, excessively loud (in both dress AND volume) and hungry. Then when they all got their food, the slurping began. A great sound!

Guess they love their ramen too...

Ezogiku Ramen Waikiki
2146 Kalakaua Avenue
Waikiki HI 96815
808-926-8616

There ARE differences between shops that share the same name. There's an Ezogiku Ramen on University Avenue down the hill from UH. Other than sharing the name, the ramen here was mediocre. I won't go on further because it was a big disappointment as this was to be my last meal before I caught the red-eye back to the mainland. A word of advice: If you go to a ramen shop and you see the bowls coming out of the kitchen with heaps of bean sprouts on top, think carefully before you order. Too much bean sprouts on bowls of ramen is like sushi maki that's all rice and not enough fish. It's FILLER!

Diner beware...!

You know, it just wouldn't be me if I flew somewhere really far and DIDN'T find a good ramen shop, just by chance.

Well, I did. This is my first full day here on O'ahu and I decided to break in my rental Roadster by doing a drive up the windward side of the island. Naturally, around 12ish, I was feeling peckish (had a small brekkie; part of the "diet") and I saw this shop in the distance. It called to me, "tabemasu"..so I did.

Parking right in front, lah!

They're apparently a well known and well regarded shop. I walked in and immediately ordered a bowl of Hakata Ramen.

mmm, could a return visit to Kyushu be in my future?

The noodles were springy and the condiments were generous. The cha-siu slice was tender and the broth was flavorful, if just a touch salty. Wonderful stuff! If you're on the Windward side of O'ahu, EAT!

Sapporo Rai Rai Ramen
124 Oneawa Street
Kailua HI 96374
1-808-230-8208