the ramen blog & other goodies!

I’ve been going to Ebisu ramen for around 20 years now, so when my wife recently asked me why I haven’t reviewed them yet, all I could do was give her my best deer-caught-in-headlights look.

Ebisu Mendokoro is owned by the same company that owns the Ebisu supermarket and the Bon Marche bakery in the same plaza. The restaurant is clean and well-lit, and it’s always crowded on the weekends. Ebisu isn’t just a ramen restaurant: they have a wide variety of offerings, and their rice is especially good. Even though I enjoy their ramen, I often end up getting their tentojidon (tempura with egg on a bowl of rice) with cold soba. Their fried rice is excellent, with lots of chunks of pork, lots of egg and onions, and fluffy Japanese rice perfectly done. Now on to their ramen! Read the rest of this entry →

For those of you who watch Unwrapped on the Food network, check out the Cheap Eats episode for a segment on Maruchan ramen. Fun tidbit: Maruchan produces 81 million miles of noodles per year!

This is yet another “stamina-type” (garlic) tonkotsu ramen. See the pink packet on the left? That’s a full packet of minced raw garlic. Yum! The garlic and soup is actually mild, and not too garlicky, but flavorful. It’s quite good. The noodles are a bit on the doughy and hard side, but also flavorful. There’s also a bit of green onion flakes and a few scattered pieces of shinachiku. It’s well balanced overall and gets an 8.

Brittany Murphy will be starring in a movie called the Ramen Girl. The movie will be a romantic comedy about a girl who ends up training to be a ramen chef after being dumped and stranded in Tokyo. Filming is scheduled to start in September. More info here and here.

Ho-ho-ho, ok I’m reviewing this special winter edition in May. It’s a garlic miso tonkotsu flavor, quite interesting. The noodles are skinny and a tiny bit hard but decent. The soup was really interesting…there wasn’t a dominant flavor, and the garlic flavor is pretty mild, but it’s good. It’s like a nice rich broth. Overall it gets a 7.5.

This is a decent ramen. Thin noodles that’re a bit bland but ok. The soup is a shoyu base and also just ok. There’re small slices of garlic, which is nice if you like garlic like me. There’s also some corn, a few bits of bamboo shoot, and a few slivers of onion. It gets a 6.