the ramen blog & other goodies!

Recent ramen reviews and tidbits:

There’ve been a lot of reviews and news about Ippudo in New York City. Walking-ixus goes one step further and gives a behind-the-scenes look.

Join a “local girl” as she goes to Yotteko-Ya Ramen/Kyoto Ramen in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Have you ever wanted to combine ramen and sushi? Now, you can!

AsianWeek goes to Katana-Ya in upscale Nob Hill in San Francisco.

Is Kintaro the best ramen in Vancouver? Read Eat, Snap, Repeat for the details.

Everyone’s so focused on Ippudo in NYC. What about Ramen Setagawa?

Even the Associated Press knows that “Ramen noodles are hotter than ever”. Read what they, and AP darling Rameniac has to say about our favorite food!

The made-in-Taiwan Q-cup ramen is a “Kyushu garlic” flavor (read tonkotsu and garlic) and features pig-faced naruto. I’ve always been a sucker for instant ramen with “piggy naruto”, though I never could figure out the relationship between pigs and naruto, but I digress.

The bowl ramen is barely half the size of most other bowl ramen, and is for anyone looking for a quick, light snack. Toppings are typical: corn, bits of carrots, cabbage, and green onions. And, oh, I think I found one small corn-kernel-sized piece of meat. The meat actually has a distinct pork flavor to it, unlike a lot of the “mystery meat” slices you get with some of the cheaper bowl ramen, and it tasted like an itsy-bitsy piece of salted hard ham. Read the rest of this entry →

From all of us at ramen ramen ramen, have a safe and sane 4th of July!

Years of disappointing experiences have taught me that I shouldn’t order ramen from restaurants that aren’t ramenyas. Too many places have ramen on their menu only as an afterthought, and ramen aficionados like me end up being bitterly disappointed by the ramen I ordered and my eating companions point and laugh at me and make me the butt of their jokes for the rest of the evening and refuse to share their food and–ahem…sorry…got a bit carried away there. Where was I? Oh yes…you would think I would’ve learned better. But thanks to some friendly recommendations, not only did I order ramen from a restaurant that specialized in other foods, I decided to go to Honda Ya for the sole purpose of trying their ramen. Read the rest of this entry →

Food manufacturer Kinrei teamed up with Japan’s Sunday Mainichi Weekly magazine to research and produce Hakodate Flavor Salt Ramen, a packaged cold ramen reflective of ramen in the Hakodate region in Hokkaido. The Hakodate ramen uses local ingredients such as water from Hokkaido and salt from nearby Okhotsk Sea. The magazine wrote about the entire process in this week’s issue. Read the rest of this entry →

An oldie but goodie for the weekend!