the ramen blog & other goodies!

One fine Saturday morning, as we discussed our plans for the weekend, my wife suddenly declared that “today’s ramen day! You’re going to eat nothing but ramen today!” Wait, what? Did I win the lotto? Am I dreaming? I guess all my recent whining about wanting to try some new ramen shops paid off. Of course, my wife’s support of my ramen habit doesn’t stop her from looking over my shoulder as I write and making fun of me. “Dear Diary,” she narrates, “Today I met some cute ramen shops. They’re so dreamy, but they don’t know I exist. How do I get them to notice me?” (insert screeching sound of needle being pulled off of a record here.)…

Ramen Mottainai, a little ramen shop hidden (there isn’t even a kanban (store sign) yet) in the back corner of a Marukai plaza in Gardena, opened in July, and was immediately descended upon by prominent foodies. Encouraged by all the positive reviews, we bravely left the Orange Curtain and ventured into scary, mysterious L.A. county. (more…)

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.

Trendy ramen comes of age in L.A. at BREADBAR (apparently, they don’t believe in lower case letters). Bakery and…well, “bread bar” by day, BREADBAR turns into a pop-up ramen yatai (food stand) serving “gourmet street food” by night and features guest chef Kazuo Shimamura from Ironnori Concepts. Their ramen selection ranges from the classics (shio, shoyu, miso, and spicy miso) to the exotic (spicy pork curry, tomato, vietnam ramen, ox tail, and foie gras). At times like this, I wished I had multiple stomachs. (more…)

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).

Have you been to Wonton Forest? Have you heard of Sapporo-Ya? How about Yukino Ya Ramen. There must be some sort of bad luck associated with this place, because Yukino Ya is the 3rd restaurant to be at this location in the past year. I happened to be in the area a week ago during a major storm and was excited to have a new ramenya to try out on such a cold, wet day. (more…)