the ramen blog & other goodies!

There’s been a lot of ramen happenings in Southern California lately, some exciting, some maybe not.

As the weather is starting to cool down, ramen is heating up!

Rameniac covers Studio City’s Ramen Jinya.

Ramen Mottainai in Gardena is tripled teamed by Exile Kiss, Go Ramen, and Rameniac!

Happy Cup jumps into the food truck craze with a ramen food truck. Has anyone tried this place yet?

Yours truly covers two new OC ramen shops: Shizuma Ramen in Irvine, and La-Men in Buena Park.

The OC Weekly reports on a soon-to-open Okazu Ramen House in Orange.

And finally, Santouka Ramen in Santa Monica will be serving a limited edition (20 per day) Spicy Miso Vegetable Ramen 8/5 to 8/8, and 8/12-8/15.

This weekend and next weekend is Mitsuwa Supermarket’s “Explore diverse flavor of Japanese Cuisine” fair, with specialty ramen, of course.

First up is Ramen Tatsunoya (House of the Dragon), making a return engagement with their pork-and-water-only tonkotsu ramen. If you missed their first appearance last year, you owe it to yourself to try it out this year.

Thurs. to Sun. 7/8-7/11 at Mitsuwa in Torrance
Thurs. to Sun. 7/15-7/18 at Mitsuwa in New Jersey


OC peeps get a taste of Ramen Ezofukuro’s tsukemen. Tsukemen is a dipping ramen where the noodles are served seperately from the soup. Ramen Ezofukuro will be serving their Shiro Shio Butter and Aka Shio Butter tsukemen (white salt butter and red salt butter, respectively. The red version is spicy).
Thurs. to Sun. 7/8-7/11 at Mitsuwa in Costa Mesa
Thurs. to Sun. 7/15-7/18 at Mitsuwa in Chicago

See the Mitsuwa web site for more info or store locations.

Who’s seen Tampopo, raise your hand? How about the Ramen Girl? And who’s heard of Udon, the movie?

“Udon,” which came out in Japan several years ago but somehow never made it to the States, will be premiering at the L.A. Film Festival on June 19. It may not be about ramen, but this sumptuously filmed movie about the next best thing will have you craving a bowl of noodles. See why award winning food critic Jonathan Gold chose this as the food-themed movie to present.

For details and tickets, go to the Los Angeles Film Festival web site, or call 1-866-FilmFest (1-866.345.6337).

L.A. hipsters rejoice. The 3rd St location of BreadBar is turning into a ramen popup restaurant. From June 8 to July 24, 5-10pm (except Sundays), BreadBar will be offering a ramen yatai (food stall) menu, featuring standard shio, shoyu, and miso ramen as well as specialty ramen such as ox tail and foie gras ramen. More details at Thrillist and BreadBar.

Yatai @ BreadBar
8718 West 3rd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90048
310 205 0124

via Neko Ramen Facebook page (yes, I got ramen news from a comic book character).

For those of you who’ve been complaining about the cost of some of Mizuki’s ramen dishes, this article is dedicated to you.

Shoichi Fujimaki, the owner/chef of Tokyo’s Fujimaki Gekijyo is planning to open a restaurant in L.A. by this August. The star of the restaurant? His “Five-Taste Imperial Blend,” a 10,000 yen bowl of ramen (appx $110 American dollars…or more like about 150 bucks come August, the way the yen’s been appreciating). The ramen has over 20 ingredients and takes over 3 days to prepare.

The Reuters article quotes one customer: “It’s certainly expensive, however, I think that it is sometimes better to come here and spend ten thousand yen than to go to another place and spend a thousand, ten times,” said Hideko Furusawa, a 49-year-old diner.

Since you put it that way…um…yeah…I totally agree…

I’m not sure if it’s the same ramen pictured here, but wow…that’s a small bowl.

Better start saving up, boys and girls!

via stick a fork in it

3/16: Grainy photo and video added. Even though the video is in English (horrible horrible sound quality though) and appears to be from Indian tv, they didn’t bother translating any of the Japanese. Go figure.

New York Times travel writer Matt Gross slurps his way through Tokyo “One Noodle at a Time.” Find out more about Tokyo’s ramen culture, and learn about the hottest Tokyo ramenyas in and Tokyo ramen blogs!