Ra-Haku - Shin-Yokohama Raumen Museum! - Japan 11/2013

A lot of this trip was spent catching up on things we've never had time for before; the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum (or "Raumen Museum" as it says on their bags) was one of those. You'd have to think it'd be a unique experience, plus good food is at least implied. My wife always thought it was super small and not worth going to, though, so we always pushed it way down on the priority list. Until now...

This is a scene from the truly unfortunate movie "Map of the Sounds of Tokyo", several scenes of which are inexplicably set inside the Ramen Museum even though none of the characters live or work anywhere near it. We'd just watched this movie, so despite it being depressingly bad, the museum was fresh in our minds and we decided to finally make the trek to Yokohama.

This sign is stupidly the only photo I took of the exterior. It's not that impressive anyway; it kind of looks like the entrance to a movie theater (and it's a little hard to find even with a GPS-enabled smartphone), although as is true everywhere in Japan, there are far more women in uniform than you'd expect standing around waiting to usher you inside.

A one-day ticket costs ¥300. Interestingly, I think a 3 month ticket was only something like ¥600 - my wife and I were saying it actually seemed like a decent deal if you worked around there and just wanted to go for lunch once in a while. You do still need to pay for the ramen itself whatever type of ticket you buy, but it's cheap and good and there are a lot of choices.

Here's the ticket and brochure - you can get them in several languages. There's some basic info about ramen and a rundown of the different shops in the museum there. We didn't really look at it, though - we just looked at the pictures on the wall as soon as you walk in to decide where to eat.

The place is small but we were honestly quite impressed. I somehow hadn't gotten this from other pictures I've seen but it's modeled to look like a typical Japanese city of 1958. I'd previously thought it was just really run down! They picked that year because it was when instant ramen was invented. Kind of an odd thing to celebrate; sort of like a "Spaghetti Museum" picking a date to celebrate the opening of the first Olive Garden.

There's a huge amount of attention to detail - this is a little "town" that runs around the side of the building, and it feels totally authentic. There are even a few real shops in here that you can go into - it's not just decoration. Since it runs all the way around the building, it actually feels like a pretty long walk, and makes the whole place feel bigger.

Period signs and weathering. They've even got the clothes on the clothesline. (A common sight still today, but you just wouldn't necessarily expect that level of extra detail at a ramen museum.)

The place we picked to eat at is called Komurasaki. They specialize in tonkotsu ramen from Kyushu. Tonkotsu is probably my favorite style, although I like shoyu ramen too and I can eat miso ramen if it's good.

To order your ramen, you first need to pick what you want from a period-style vending machine and get a ticket. This system is common in Japan; the idea is you don't spend 20 minutes with your butt taking up a seat while you stare at a menu inside the restaurant. Even at the ramen museum, you're meant to be in and out when you actually eat.

Unfortunately this system does ensure that you can (and probably will) get stuck behind a bunch of idiots like anywhere else. We seemed to have a junior high school class trip from China in front of us at this machine, so we were waiting for them to make their choices and buy their tickets for about 15 minutes.

This was our ramen and gyoza. I think I just got the regular with extra meat. It was incredibly good, as you'd expect from a place that's been in business since 1954. I wouldn't say it was better than the best I'd ever had, but it came pretty close. The meat did melt in my mouth; the broth was really well balanced; the noodles were tender and fresh.

BIRU!! This place makes their own. It was interesting, in a microbrew sort of way. It tasted vaguely Belgian, which I wasn't really expecting. It was good, though.

The place bills itself as both a museum and "amusement park". We weren't sure what that meant, but as we were walking around after eating, we saw this guy setting up... for what we didn't know at the time. We decided to see what he was planning. Have you ever seen a contact juggler? I've seen them in YouTube videos, but never one in person - it is quite mesmerizing even if you know exactly how they're doing it. This is the guy we saw:

I believe he's somewhat older and better now than in that video (he looks about 12 there), but that's the only video he seems to have up of himself. He also tried regular juggling with seven balls (you try it - I've never seen anyone do it successfully before) and that took him three tries to get right, but he finally did. But his contact juggling was perfect and we were both hypnotized. We gave him ¥500 at the end.

On our way out we stopped at the museum shop (which includes a giant slot car track for some reason). I didn't get pics of the shop but this is one of the things we bought there, as a gift for SCANDAL at their concert the next day. (I also bought some ramen for my nieces back in the US.) This is a ramen set; four packages of ramen from the places in the museum. One of them is Komurasaki, the place we ate at.

The neat thing about the ramen they sell there is that it's fresh. I went a little nuts on Minca in NYC here a few years ago because they seemed proud of using dried noodles, and I went even more ballistic on the NY Times for dismissively saying noodles were "the easy part" of ramen. You can totally taste and feel the difference between fresh and dried ramen noodles. It's like saying dried spaghetti is just as good as fresh, because the only part of a spaghetti dinner that matters is the sauce. No!

Definitely recommend this place. It's pretty tiny but cheap and jam packed full of eye candy - no corner of it hasn't been touched by someone trying (and succeeding) to make it look authentically old, like something out of an original Godzilla movie. And the ramen is good!

Foooooooooood! - Japan 11/2013

Whenever I come home from Japan, I really, really miss the food. And I'm not just talking about stereotypical Japanese things like sushi and sashimi and ramen... well, ok, maybe ramen. But other things too. I've written about Kobe beef, tonkatsu, taco rice and other Japanese fast food before, but every time I go there I feel like we eat really well, and this time I ended up gaining 5 pounds in 11 days (yikes!).

I confess I'm not always the best food photographer and my phone is not always the best camera, but here's a little pictorial ode to some of the best meals we had on this trip:

Our hotel at Nasu Highland Park had a great shabu shabu restaurant. This is the style of cooking where you boil thinly sliced meat yourself, along with vegetables and other things, then eat them with rice and sauces. We had beef and pork in several different broths.

The one on the right is a pork broth. I think the one on the left was just a chicken broth. Both added a ton of flavor to the meat. No further seasoning needed. We had another pot going that had other stuff in it too.

Usually when you see shabu shabu on American TV, they show the hosts just dipping the meat in for a second before quickly taking it out. That's not quite right - you're going to get sick from eating raw meat. (Look at this Martha Stewart clip - see how she keeps taking the meat out and wants to eat it immediately, whereas the Japanese guy just leaves his piece sitting in the broth? Martha, you're doing it wrong!)

You're not even really supposed to use the same chopsticks - you pick up the raw meat with one set, then pick up the cooked meat with another. (My wife knew this already, but the waitress was careful to point it out just in case.)

These are udon noodles! Everywhere you go has their own noodle style. These noodles were about as thick as a finger! We used these to finish off the broth after eating up all the meat. It was actually really good - it was like gnocchi.

I'm going to write a separate post on Nasu Highland Park itself, but this was from a 50's style American diner inside the park. This burger wasn't very American but I learned long ago to get over that hangup - nothing "American" in Japan really is, it's always a crazy mashup. This had a demi-glace sauce on it - Japan loves its demi-glace, they put it on everything. Those tater tots were the best tater tots I've ever had - incredibly light and crispy. Japanese fried food comes with all the trans fat you can eat, so you know it tastes good!

In New York, this dish would be illegal. Yes, that's raw chicken. (I don't think they called this "chicken sashimi", because it doesn't quite qualify.) It was actually tasty! Ironically the part that I could not eat was the vegetables.

I would not have had the guts to order this myself - this was at a bar/restaurant that a couple of business associates of ours took us to, and this simply appeared in front of us. My wife laughed beforehand because they asked us "can you eat chicken?" Little did we know...

We got about seven different chicken courses there. I wish I knew the name of this place - it had great atmosphere and I was mesmerized watching the bartender's technique for getting the perfect head on a beer every time. But we were just dumped in a taxi and eventually arrived there. It was the kind of place without a sign, hidden in the back of a building on the second floor.

Believe it or not, this was at a highway rest stop in between Ibaraki and Nasu! I didn't have one of these but my wife and everyone in her family did. My in-laws just ate them like popsicles, although my wife ate hers more like an American, picking around all the bones and steering clear of the head and tail.

I mentioned Brise Verte in my post about the Prince Park Tower hotel - this was the sashimi salad that started our price fixe set. All the dishes they served us were really pretty - cell phone pics really don't do them justice. It looked like they had placed every individual element on every plate separately by hand.

Of course there was plenty of ramen. This was at the Ramen Museum in Yokohama - a post's coming about that place too. This was really good. This place also makes their own beer. (All the restaurants inside the museum are independent shops like you'd find on the street, which is kinda the point of the museum.)

This is ramen at Yo! Teko-ya in Odaiba, which is still the best ramen in the world, or at least in my world. I wanted another bowl, but you know just one of these is like 1,500 calories and an entire day's worth of cholesterol. Not that I was watching my weight (again, I packed on an extra 1/2 pound per day, which is 1,750 extra calories above what I normally eat, every single day), but you gotta draw the line somewhere.

I even love coffee in Japan, which is based more on French and Italian style coffee than American coffee. They have a separate thing on the menu called "American Coffee" that's supposed to be weaker. Since I can't get decent decaf anywhere in Japan without waiting for them to make it from scratch (which they are always happy to do, but I am usually not happy to wait), I almost always just order a cappuccino. This one was at Cafe Dotour, a chain like Starbucks - I love Dotour because a) they use real china, and b) they do cappuccino art!

New York Ramen: Misoya

Returning to a theme!

When I first started writing about Japanese ramen in New York, there wasn't a lot of choice. Real Japanese ramen was one of the final frontiers in authentic ethnic cuisine in New York, and Minca was basically it (and I feel a little bad about my harsh review of them now).

Today, ramen's everywhere in New York.  For a while I was actually keeping up and basically reviewing all the major ramen shops - nowadays, that's pretty much impossible.  Sorry about that, but you're on your own if you find something I haven't reviewed here.  (I never did review Setagaya, but here's a quick one: it's all right; nothing special, but not bad).  It's like playing whack-a-mole trying to visit all these new ramen restaurants popping up all over the place.

The good news is that this has caused everyone to really up their game - you just can't get away with mediocre ramen anymore and expect people to like it.  People are hopefully becoming a little more sophisticated and there is definitely more competition.  And the quality has gotten steadily better over the years as a result.

This week my wife and I happened on Misoya, a new ramen shop that apparently also has a shop in California (or so their t-shirts say).  They've been open for one month.  They do not have their own web site or I would link to them.

Misoya Ramen
129 Second Ave
Manhattan, NY 10003

The verdict: good!

As its name implies, Misoya specializes in (as in only serves) miso ramen.  This is a common thing in Japan; many ramen shops serve specific types of ramen.  If you want something other than miso ramen, go somewhere else.  I see this as the maturing of the New York ramen scene (is there a "ramen scene"??) - there are now enough ramen shops that we're starting to see specialization.  This is a good thing, because these specialty restaurants do their one thing really well, and there are plenty of ramen shops, so why do they all need to do the same thing?

I'm personally not a huge fan of miso in general so I was a little nervous, but first of all, just look at that bowl above!  It's a beautiful bowl of ramen.  The ingredients in the ramen I picked are a little different than what I'm used to, but they were very good, and you can always get more "traditional" ingredients.  I picked the one the waiter said was the most popular, sort of their house ramen.  They serve three different broths and then have several mixes of ingredients; I chose the standard broth, though you can get it heavier or lighter as well.

In the standard broth, the miso is not overpowering and you can still clearly taste pork marrow.  It's a rich and flavorful broth - very nice.  The noodles themselves were fabulous, just the right thickness and texture, and the pork!  The pork was some of the best I've had in New York, almost rivaling Yo! Tekoya in Tokyo. Melt in your mouth kind of stuff.  There is a lot of food in that bowl - I could not finish it, whereas I can finish the ramen at Rai Rai Ken and other ramen shops.  And it was not for lack of trying.

Misoya is a sit-down table restaurant, unlike Rai Rai Ken and pretty much any real ramen shop in Japan.  This actually drives me crazy about Rai Rai Ken these days - despite having some of the best ramen in the city, it's impossible to get a seat there because New Yorkers generally don't understand how to eat ramen at a place like that.  You eat fast and go.  You don't talk.  You slurp, you eat, you pay, you leave.  It's Japanese fast food.  Rai Rai Ken has become so popular that there are always people waiting outside because it's just a small counter shop and people sit there talking for 30 minutes after eating.  Well, Misoya's nod to American culture is that it's set up like a regular restaurant, and there is no rush.  So, take that for better or worse, though I imagine most New Yorkers will take it for better.

Sorry for not posting a pic of the storefront - we forgot to take one.  Maybe I'll update this post someday.  But it's easy to find with the address.

Even if you're not big on miso, give Misoya a chance.  They really make a tasty bowl of ramen.

The best ramen in the world is still the best ramen in the world

One of the things I had to do on our trip to Japan last month was return to the place that defines ramen for me: Yo! Teko-ya (or Yotteko-ya) in Odaiba.  I wrote about this place after my first visit there, and I have never had ramen that good before or since, in either Japan or New York.  (Some places come close, but none have quite gotten there.)  That includes the other Yo! Tekoya location in Shinjuku - don't assume that Japanese "chains" all have the exact same stuff.  Most smaller chains are just independently operated stores, like franchises in this country.

Anyway, it was a little different this time!  But still amazing.  For review, this is what I got on my first visit:

And this was my bowl last month:

This was that same bowl five minutes later:

I ransacked that ramen.

This was shoyu ramen, which is a soy sauce based broth.  I did not get shoyu ramen last time; I believe I got spicy ramen.  Anyway, this was unlike any shoyu ramen I've ever had - it was very rich for shoyu ramen, with a lot of marrow melted in there, and a lot of pork flavor.  It was the best ramen broth I have ever had.  And the pork!  It's a cliche, but the pork literally melted in my mouth.  I am not being at all hyperbolic.  I finally understood the appeal of pork fat.  Usually when I get ramen, the pork is kind of chewy and the fat is a big reason why; this pork was prepared properly and the fat, while solid sitting in the bowl, just turned to jello as soon as it hit the inside of my mouth.  It was delicious.

The whole thing was prepared a little differently than my bowl a couple years ago - maybe they have some new cooks in there.  But it was just as good.  You have to go to this place if you visit Tokyo.  It's in Odaiba, DECKS Tokyo Beach, ground floor.

New York Ramen: Rai Rai Ken

Now this is a ramen shop.

New Yorkers have an odd idea of what a ramen place is supposed to be, which is not surprising I guess, in the same way that it's not surprising that the Japanese have an odd idea of what a pizzeria is supposed to be. Different cultures. But I wasn't too impressed with Ippudo or Setagaya, which are two of the trendier ramen places in the city (and also among the more expensive - surprise!), and which both serve food that's a little disappointing with an ambience that's hardly authentic. No doubt Ippudo is the most popular ramen place right now, and it's not that it's bad... but it's not like a real ramen shop.

Rai Rai Ken, which has apparently been around since before any of the trendy places opened, is like walking into Tokyo. Some people complain that it's small and cramped - which it is - but that's just part of what makes it real. It's one long wooden counter with stools, and barely enough space to sideways-walk by. One tip: do not sit at the counter to the left of the front door - there is no room to eat there! It's like eating in coach on an airplane.

Both times I've eaten at Rai Rai Ken, I've had the curry ramen. My last time there was the first time I've ever finished an entire bowl of ramen, broth and all. I'm not sure those who haven't had real ramen understand how much food this is. It's approximately like eating an entire box of spaghetti, plus the water you cook it in and about eight meatballs.

So what makes Rai Rai Ken so good? Whereas Menchanko-tei has an overall fine balance of quality ingredients, Rai Rai Ken is almost all about the broth. Most ramen aficionados will tell you that the broth is the most important part. I agree that it is the most important individual ingredient. I still think Menchanko-tei's noodles are better, and their pork and vegetables are tastier and maybe a little fresher, but Rai Rai Ken has hands down the best ramen broth I have ever tasted - in New York or Tokyo. Now, the caveat there is that I've only had the curry ramen, but it was just a beautiful broth, even to look at. Such a rich color and thickness, and you can see just the right amount of melted pork fat forming a glistening layer on top. In terms of taste, none of the individual flavors of the pork or curry are lost, and there's just the right amount of spice. Yum! I can't stop eating it.

Rai Rai Ken also has great gyoza, which is another important measure of both the quality and authenticity of a ramen shop. (Ippudo doesn't even have gyoza, which I found unforgivable.) Rai Rai Ken's are obviously homemade and have a lot of vinegar and some kind of herb that I can't quite identify. They're a taste explosion. They're also served piping hot straight out of the frying pan, so do yourself a favor and let them cool down for a minute.

Go early or go late, because this place is jam packed at rush hours. We've gone at about 9PM both times and still had to wait for a seat. It's usually a pretty short wait - most people seem to know that you don't sit and chat at a real ramen shop - but be prepared to stand outside for at least a few minutes. And don't forget to pick up a point card when you're done!

Rai Rai Ken
214 E 10th St
(between 1st Ave & 2nd Ave)
New York, NY 10003
(212) 477-7030

The Best Ramen in New York City

Or at least, the best I've had.

Let's review. So far, we've been to:

Minca on 5th St. between A and B
Menkui-tei on 54th St. between 5th and 6th
Setaga-ya (haven't written that one up yet) on 1st Ave. between 8th and 9th
Menchanko-tei on 55th St. between 5th and 6th
Ippudo, on 4th Ave. and 10th St., which wasn't open at the time I originally wrote this. More on them later.

There are actually two "ramen districts" in NYC - one around the East Village, another lesser-known one in midtown. The midtown restaurants are actually more authentic, and less trendy.

This is Menchanko-tei, again. We went back, just like I said we would, and this time I got the Hakata ramen.

It's pretty much exactly what I want from ramen. Pork bone-based broth that's rich but not too thick or salty, then your basic thin, firm but not too firm noodles, pork, scallions and a couple other vegetables I can't quite identify. There are a lot of noodles in there too - I was stuffed after eating it. It's not piled high like the bowl I had at Yo! Teko-ya in Tokyo (go on, click that link if you haven't seen it, it's pretty awesome), but it's still pretty full up with food. The pork was nice and tender, not too fatty, the vegetables all crunchy - not like they'd been sitting in the broth for weeks.

My wife got the miso ramen:

Now, about Ippudo, which seems to currently be the ramen shop with the most buzz. And in some ways, I can see why. The dining room is very trendy - which Menchanko-tei most certainly isn't. Ippudo's broth is maybe slightly richer and more flavorful. I'd say overall they were pretty equivalent.

But there are a few things I didn't like about Ippudo: the noodles and the quantity of ingredients. Also, no gyoza! This is a sin. (In fact, their menu overall is pretty simple, not that that's necessarily a negative.) Their noodles are obviously dried - they were still dry when they were served to me, and they never fully softened. (Menchanko-tei's may be dried as well, but I couldn't tell if they were.) And both my wife and I only got two small pieces of pork in our soup, and hardly any vegetables. Their ramen is basically just broth and dried noodles. It tastes really good, but it's a little unsatisfying in the end. And all that tips the scales in Menchanko-tei's favor.

But Ippudo is most definitely the best ramen in the Village area. If you're down there and don't feel like trekking up to midtown, hit Ippudo.

A little backstory on ramen broth: there are different types of broth, some of them more or less popular in different regions. Hakata ramen is popular in Hakata, Fukuoka, of course. Tokyo is more of a shoyu (soy sauce base) town. Miso's popular up north, around Sapporo. It's also my wife's favorite, even though she's from the Tokyo area. Most of the ramen restaurants in New York will do all types of ramen broth, although not all equally well. I'm basing my qualitative judgments on Hakata ramen, although my wife has agreed with my rankings.

Every time we go to a ramen shop in New York, we seem to do a little better. Our first time out was a huge disappointment. But each successive restaurant has been at least as good and in most cases better than the last. If you do go to Menchanko-tei, just make sure you order something on the menu that's actually called "ramen" - their own special noodle dishes, while good in their own right and also ramen (just their own style), aren't really what I expect from traditional ramen noodles.

UPDATE: If you've been here before, you know that Menchanko-tei had a problem with their liquor license for a while. That's sorted now. The beer is back!

New York Ramen Part 2 - Menchanko-tei and Menkui-tei

After our somewhat disappointing visit to Minca a few weeks ago, we've been on a little bit of a quest for good New York ramen. Before we head back downtown to Setaga-ya and maybe one or two others, my wife wanted me to try two midtown ramen shops she likes, Menchanko-tei and Menkui-tei.

I'm happy to report that it is possible to get good ramen in New York, although I honestly still haven't found anywhere that equals Yo! Teko-ya in Odaiba. And the biggest problem is still the beer!

These restaurants are within a block of each other, on 55th between 5th and 6th and 56th between 5th and 6th. (That's a whole lotta 5's and 6's.) This is not a really heavy Japanese area, but it is probably the largest business district in Manhattan, so both shops no doubt get a lot of lunch traffic from both Japanese and American customers. We went both times on a weekend evening, so neither restaurant was all that full. (Menchanko-tei was when we first got there, but it turned out to be one party of about 20 people filling up most of the restaurant. Once they left, it was pretty quiet.) By that time, the office crowd has left for the weekend, and all that remains is mostly local neighborhood foot traffic.


Menkui-tei was up first. This is a pretty dingy-looking place - perfectly authentic, to me! - with a long counter near the kitchen and some pretty basic faux-wood tables along the walls. The decor is pretty low-rent and the facade outside is absolutely filthy, but that didn't bother me - it's pretty much what I expect from a ramen shop anyway. I ordered the spicy ramen, knowing I'd probably regret it, but I just can't resist when I see that on a menu. Here's what it looked like:

The spicy ramen doesn't come with all of the vegetables and other stuff that their regular ramen does. It's got basically pork and scallions, if I remember right. My wife ordered a shio ramen, which has a little more stuff, although it's hard to see it.

My broth was not to be messed around with. It was so spicy that I couldn't even drink it on its own. It tasted really good, though, and as long as I was eating something in the broth rather than the broth itself, it was the perfect amount of spice. The noodles themselves were slightly harder than I'd like and were obviously not fresh, but they weren't bad. The pork was better than Minca's and not as fatty, but it had been stewing in the broth a bit too long and was a little too chewy. I was a little disappointed that I wasn't completely full when we left (I probably should have ordered a ramen dish that came with a bit more "stuff").

Here are the noodles themselves:

I showed some photos from Menkui-tei in my post about my quest for real Japanese beer in New York. This beer problem has become a theme now - ramen almost has to be served with beer and gyoza does too, and I can't seem to find good, or sometimes even any beer at ramen shops in New York.

Tonight, we went to Menchanko-tei, and the first thing we were greeted by was a sign saying they had lost their liquor license. I don't even know how this can happen, but they had absolutely no alcohol of any kind. The sign advised customers to just go and buy it somewhere else and bring it in. The problem is they also have a sign saying they won't seat partial parties during peak hours, so we either had to both go - and delay eating (there was a line at that point, with people behind us) - or just live without it. We decided to live without it, although neither of us were very happy about it. It was Saturday night!

Anyway, Menchanko-tei is actually originally from Japan - Hakata, apparently. It's a small chain that's owned by a parent company that also runs a few other restaurants - including several more in New York, one of which you may have heard was shut down for health violations. No, this is not that Menchanko-tei.

The place looks pretty rustic, and not faux-rustic either. I had some misgivings about whether or not it was actually a ramen place - most of their dishes are not called "ramen", and they have about an equal number of dishes on the menu called ramen as they do called udon (two each, by my count). Still, my wife assured me that everything was ramen, unless it was specifically called udon. (This is apparently a little different than most ramen shops in Tokyo, which serve nothing but ramen or udon, rarely both.)

I ordered the Tori Kara Menchanko - probably kind of a mistake:


Looks pretty good, right? Well, it was pretty good. But I didn't really like any of the stuff I got in the soup - my fault, they have plenty of combinations available and I didn't need to pick this one. Their standard Menchanko ramen comes with scary-looking shrimp still in the shell, so I wanted something else - and the Tori Kara is a fried chicken ramen. Here's the miso ramen, which comes with everything their regular ramen has:

I didn't take a picture of the noodles, but they were very thick. I had my suspicions for a while that it was actually udon, until my wife looked it up and proved to me that what's ramen and what's udon has nothing to do with thickness and everything to do with the ingredients used to make it. But these were some thick ramen noodles. They weren't bad for what they were, they just weren't really my preference.

One thing I didn't like was that the meat and vegetables in the broth had obviously been stewing in there for quite some time. They were not fresh, and the meat was tough while the vegetables were almost gelatinized. I like ramen where the broth is made separately from the rest of the dish, and then it's all combined at the end. That way, the meat stays tender, the vegetables are nice and crisp, and all of the flavors come through.

I will say that the broth at Menchanko-tei was pretty amazing. I drank nearly all of it. No, I don't think it's because they stewed all those ingredients in it. The flavor of their shoyu broth comes mostly from soy sauce, mushrooms, scallops and seaweed - all ingredients not actually in the ramen that they serve. But the downtown ramen shops could probably take a lesson or two from this place in how to make a good broth.

Oh, and I gotta mention the gyoza - this place has some of the best gyoza I've ever had. They were crispy without being crunchy or tough, they held together well when eaten, and they had a really fresh pork taste.

Well, the quest for great New York City ramen continues, although both Menchanko-tei and Menkui-tei are perfectly edible. I have a suspicion that Menchanko-tei is actually the better ramen shop, although I need to go back and order something more to my liking to confirm that.

UPDATE: We went back to Menchanko-tei, and I had the actual "ramen" (everything on their menu is ramen, but they have a few bowls that are actually called ramen). I tried the Hakata Ramen, and I'm pleased to say it's the best ramen I've had so far in New York. It really came close to matching Yo! Teko-ya.

Ramen Showdown: New York vs. Tokyo!

I spent a post a while back talking about how New York's East Village is now akin to a "Little Tokyo" (or maybe more appropriately, a "Little Harajuku"). You can really find almost anything there now that you can find in Japan, albeit usually not the best quality. (Hey, it is really New York and not Tokyo, after all.) On our trip to Japan last month, we'd had some truly great ramen at a place called "Yo! Teko-ya" on Odaiba, and we were missing the experience a little bit. So we decided to try one of the ramen shops that have now sprung up on Manhattan's Lower East Side, including the East Village and Alphabet City.

We settled on Minca both because it's fairly well known among the Japanese community (though not universally liked) and because it got a really good writeup in the New York Times, who I do actually trust. (It does drive me crazy how they consider Avenue A and B the "East Village", though.)

Now, I will be the first to admit that I am no expert in ramen. My wife comes a lot closer than I do, though - she's been eating at ramen-ya (ramen shops) all her life, and is a native of the Tokyo area. So I trust her opinions on this, and I will say that I at least know what I like. I'm also experienced in a lot of different kinds of authentic ethnic food, including Japanese - I'm not the kind of guy that eats at Olive Garden and thinks he's eating Italian.

That said, Minca does look the part. It's small, somewhat dingy and filled with mostly counter space around the kitchen - it looks like a proper ramen shop. The waitresses (who were oddly fashionable for a ramen shop) were Japanese. The atmosphere is mostly genuine, with the one nod to New York being the exposed brick walls on either side - not a common look in Japanese interior design.

That's the Minca exterior. One of the two fashionable waitresses is cleaning up after us in the right side window - she's even wearing a hat. The exterior of the ramen shop we visited in Tokyo is at the top of this post for comparison.

I ordered the "Minca ramen" while my wife ordered the "basic ramen" - the main difference being the broth. Hers was thicker and with a pork stock base ("tonkotsu" ramen), mine "lighter" and with more of a soy sauce base ("shoyu" ramen). Her noodles were also a little different, but I'll get to that in a second. We also ordered a plate of gyoza - Japanese dumplings - as an appetizer. These were actually pretty good, and tasted like homemade. Gyoza are one thing I do know pretty well by now.

That's my ramen. Compare to this, from our visit to Tokyo:


There are probably a couple things you immediately notice. The first is that the Tokyo ramen just has a lot more stuff. More meat, more vegetables, more everything. It's literally piled over the top of the broth. And if it all looks fresher in the photo from Tokyo, that's because it was.

The second thing, though a bit less obvious, is the beer. I'm gonna digress just a little bit to talk about that for a minute. Here's a better view of the beer from Tokyo:


That's Kirin on tap, and a big glass of it, ice cold. Minca, like most American restaurants, just gives you a 12oz. bottle, and it's the Canadian stuff. I'm always surprised by this at Japanese restaurants in the US, because beer is such a big deal at any Japanese restaurant in Japan. They drink a lot of it, and they demand that it be on draft and practically frozen cold. Beer there is cheap, plentiful and good. Canadian Sapporo is not the same as real Sapporo. It tastes almost nothing like the real thing. After having real Sapporo straight from the Sapporo brewery at the Yebisu Beer Garden, I now have a real baseline for comparison. Canadian Sapporo just doesn't cut it.

See here for a look at what a real can or bottle of Sapporo looks like. If you can't find one of those anywhere, you may be able to find a silver 22oz. can like the one in front here:


Even that's not quite the same, but it is brewed in a proper Sapporo factory, and it's currently the only size can still commonly available in the US that's brewed in Japan by Sapporo.

Anyway, back to the ramen. One thing that kind of jumped out at me in the New York Times article was this:

Mr. Kamada uses dried, portioned noodles delivered from Japan. Though crucial to ramen, the noodles are the easy part.

Whoa, warning sign! Even I know that you can't take the noodles for granted in ramen - otherwise we may as well all be eating instant, and Mr. Kamada may as well just be importing Top Ramen. In fact, for all I know, that's exactly what he's doing.

The ramen at Yo! Teko-ya in Tokyo was absolutely fantastic - that includes the spicy broth, the noodles, and the meat and vegetables. At Minca, the noodles clearly had a different texture, and one that I associate with dried pasta. I'm not sure if Yo! Teko-ya uses fresh noodles or not, but the texture of their noodles was definitely closer to fresh than dried - much "springier" without being hard, or on the other hand mushy. The noodles at Minca were hard, even after sitting in the hot broth for five extra minutes.

The broth, on the other hand, was good, but given the fact that Minca basically ignores the noodles in favor of creating the best broth possible, I had expected better. Mine tasted mainly like soy sauce. My wife's was probably better if your tastes are native Japanese, but I couldn't really eat it - it was too rich from pork bone marrow. Even the broth was not at the level of Yo! Teko-ya. Neither was the meat, which was too fatty - though I did eat all of it.

My wife actually said afterwards, "this is one of the biggest disappointments in my life." She wasn't joking!

The sad thing is the customers we saw were mostly westerners, all universally praising their ramen. I guess if they don't know any better, then it's no skin off their backs, but I wish they could know what really good ramen tastes like. It can be so much better than Minca. The New York Times is full of crap.

My advice to Mr. Kamada: work on your noodles. Use less fatty meat. The broth is probably okay, but I wouldn't mind a few tweaks - something in between my salty soy sauce and my wife's fatty, rich pork broth would be nice. And please, import some proper Japanese beer.

There are other ramen shops both on the Lower East Side as well as up in midtown near where I work. We're going to try some more, and I'll let you all know if any of them compare to Yo! Teko-ya. Minca needs to stop taking everything but the broth for granted.

UPDATE: The New York ramen quest continues. See Part 2!

Tokyo Day 2 - Noodle Shop!

Tonight, we finally checked out a real Japanese noodle shop. We had planned to see Evangelion 1.0 after visiting Sega Joypolis, but we pushed it back until tomorrow because of the late hour. All we had time to do was eat, and we've wanted to try a real, authentic noodle shop for a while now. We found one in the same building as Joypolis, and figured it'd be worth a shot. If you want to look for it yourself after reading this, it's called "Yo! Teko-ya" and it's in the DECKS Tokyo Beach building, 1st floor. Here's a link to their official site.

My wife's obviously been to plenty of noodle shops in Tokyo, but not for a long while now. I never have had the privilege.

One thing I didn't know is that there are actually two separate kinds of noodle shop: ramen and udon. They're never mixed. Well, not in a "real" noodle shop, anyway. Tonight, we ate at a ramen shop - they're more common than udon shops, although there's also an udon shop in this same building (and it was packed).

Here's what I got:

It's a spicy pork ramen. It had an egg on it too, but I gave it to my wife. Here it is! (Broken, in the top left. Yeah, it's brown.)

Hers was some sort of vegetable and mushroom ramen with kimchi.

We both agreed that it was pretty frikkin' awesome. I have never had ramen like that. Even my wife, who's a ramen shop veteran, was impressed - she said ramen is usually not this good, even in Tokyo. I mean this ain't no "Top Ramen" or even "Cup Noodle". This is the real thing. Fresh, real ingredients and a lot of them. Perfectly balanced soup. And of course, a lot of noodles. This is a real meal. I don't think I can eat the instant stuff anymore.

The atmosphere was also appropriately dingy and cramped, although not dirty - just that sort of "urban rustic" feel that tells you that a place has been both designed for maximum efficiency and is also well-worn. Pretty much what I'd expect from a noodle shop. So I was pretty satisfied.

I gotta mention too that I may have also experienced my first bit of xenophobia from our waiter, although it's tough to say for sure. Every time he was dealing with us and heard my wife start to talk to me in English, he'd leave. It was actually a little strange. He was nice and all, but he'd just leave whenever he heard English. Some people might get pissed off and indignant about this (my wife kinda did), but you know what? I didn't care. It's not my country, and he didn't invite me here. If he wants to feel that way, it's his right. I got my food and it was good, and that's all I care about.

I leave you with this disturbing image: