the ramen blog & other goodies!

There might not be any ramen reviews for a short while…my lucky charm of a wife managed to win 20 burritos at Chiptole Mexican Grill. Anyone who’s ever been to Chiptole knows that that is a LOT of burritos (they weigh around 2 lbs each)! Even after our grabby friends and relatives got their share (just kidding!), we still have enough burritos in our fridge to last us for a few days. So excuse me as I gorge on nothing but delicious burritos for a while…hmm…I wonder if a ramen burrito would be any good…

Who ever thought investigative reporting on the mortgage and housing industry would be so…wacky? The people over at blown mortgage and housing panic have been reporting on whether or not ramen sales go up as the housing market goes down. Oh, and did I mention that the nice people at Housing Panic just published an exclusive interview with yours truly? Enjoy!

The lovely and gourmet-looking packaging lured me in. Wow! Deluxe noodles, exquisite shoyu…even the salt is special! How could I possibly pass this up! There’re special ingredients galore: large chunks of lightly grilled onions, miniature shrimp (yes! shrimp!), shiitake mushrooms! Visions of instant ramen nirvana floated through my head…

I slowly poured the boiling water in excitement, being extra careful to fill the bowl exactly to the indented waterline. I impatiently counted out exactly 180 seconds (3 minutes for those of you patient enough to count in minutes, not seconds)…
(yes, I’m actually going to make you click on “more” to read the rest of this review, because that’s the kind of person I am!) Read the rest of this entry →

This is the last day of Ogawaya ramen week (actually, this review is 2 days late. Sorry…had a busy weekend), and I’m a bit sad. But, I’m also a bit glad…you try to come up with 5 different and interesting ways to describe the same noodles! I also want to give a shoutout to rameniac for his timely and wildly informative “field guide” to 22 (yes, 22!) popular ramen styles in Japan. If you want to read up on the background behind the hakata and kurume ramen I’ve been talking about for the past week, this is a great resource.

Every once in a while, events fall into place that makes you think of fate; even though I chose this week’s ramen in random order, it turned out I was actually eating them in order: each day’s was progressively better, and today’s ramen was the best of the bunch. Read the rest of this entry →

Nissin Foods, makers of the ubiquitous Cup
Noodles, is issuing a voluntary recall of some shrimp-flavored noodles. Nissin Foods recently discovered that some of the seafood-flavored powder (mmm…powered seafood…) contains cod and lobster, which some people are apparently allergic to.

So if you have any seafood allergies, you may want to read all the facts before you eat that next bowl or cup of Nissin noodles with shrimp (also “Great Value,” “Thrifty Maid,” and “Jehling” instant noodles).

Otherwise, move along! There’s nothing to see here!

via that’s fit

I have a bad habit of not really looking at or reading the packages of ramen that I eat until after I’ve eaten them. In this case, I was a bit surprised to open the package and see two different colored soup packets…was this some special “red/white song battle” (K?haku Uta Gassen) ramen? No, there’re actually two types of soup in this package! Cool! The white one is tonkotsu. The red one is tonkotsu shoyu.

Read the rest of this entry →