November 02, 2008By: edjusted Category: ramen tidbits
“You’ll believe a cat can make ramen!” No, that’s not the official tagline for this movie, but it should be. Or should it? Neko Ramen Taishou, or “Cat Ramen Boss,” began as a manga about a cat who runs a ramenya. The manga inspired an animated TV series and a live action movie version will be out this month in Japan. No, I’m not making this up nor have I been drinking.
The 2007 animated TV series is available for free download on Vuze.com (with English subtitles!) and is both wacky and entertaining. My favorite is episode 12 (”slightly gansta ramen!”), though episode 2 is also quite mya mya meow mya nya nya mya nya.
It looks like New Yorkers are having all the fun this month. Join the Nippon Food Club of NYC on their ongoing mission to find the best ramenya in New York.
For hardcore ramen fans only: make your own tonkotsu ramen. From scratch. Seriously.
I’ve mentioned this before: Tomato Ramen fans (you know who you are) need to head to Foo Foo Tei to try their Beef Tomato ramen!
New York’s Ippudo is offering six new seasonal ramen, including a Tomato Ramen (I’m starting to see a pattern here) and a simple but delicious-looking Tori Ramen.
Vancouver has another new ramenya, the simply named menya (”noodle store”).
Can a ramenya succeed in the land of pasta (or, wow! there’s ramen in Florence?!?)
November 02, 2008By: edjusted Category: ramen tidbits
My favorite iron chef has always been Masaharu Morimoto. Maybe I’m biased because I had the opportunity to meet him in person at his Morimoto restaurant in New York, but I’ve always preferred his quiet, unpretentious style over some of his counterparts’ tendency to be more flashy. And unlike some other “celebrity” sushi restaurants that are more hype than substance (cough, Nobu, cough), Morimoto the restaurant is not only amazingly good, but (relatively) reasonably priced, but I digress…
NY Magazine recently featured a two part article on ramen, featuring Morimoto’s tips on ramen and his pick of the 5 best ramenyas in New York City.
I’ve only visited Rai Rai Ken, his number five choice, but was a bit surprised (spoiler alert) to see him choose Momofuku as #1. I’ve never eaten there before, but from what I’ve heard, Momofuku Noodle Bar (emphasis mine) is really more of…well, a noodle bar than a ramenya.
So can any NYC ramen patrons out there chime in? Does Morimoto-san know ramen? Is a trip to NYC in my future?
An elderly woman in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, became ill after eating a Nissin Cup Noodle. After an examination, paradichlorobenzene, which is used in mothballs and insect repellent, was found in the soup. The specific Cup Noodle was traced back to a factory in Ibaraki Prefecture and was manufactured on August 30 of this year. Nissin President Susumu Nakagawa announced that his firm will voluntarily recall about 500,000 Cup Noodles that were produced on the same date.
(By the way, for anyone who’s wondering, Cup Noodles are known as Cup Noodle (singular) in Japan.)
October 12, 2008By: edjusted Category: ramen shops
Located in a seemingly deserted neighborhood and housed inside what looks like a liquor store in a not-so-good neighborhood, Foo-Foo Tei is the unlikely ramen hotspot of San Gabriel Valley. Foo-Foo Tei has been on my radar for a while, and since the star of Go Ramen! has committed himself to eating Foo-Foo Tei’s 31 styles of ramen in 31 days, I decided that there’s no time like the present to join in the festivities. In fact, I ran into both Go Ramen!’s Keizo and fellow food blogger Exile Kiss. Is Foo-Foo Tei the new ramen party central?
Since Keizo is and will be doing a much more thorough job than I could in covering Foo-Foo Tei’s offerings, we’ll be doing something a bit different for this review. Our impressions of Foo-Foo Tei will be covered slide-show style. Click on to the first picture, gentle reader, then click on through to read the conclusion!
