Outside of Los Angeles and New York (more educated / cultured populace?) ramen restaurants aren’t really that known.
Ramen:
I’ve even see more pho places than ramen.
Probably because most Americans equate ramen with starving college students and have no desire to revisit that time in their lives, at least culinarally.
Wagamama’s outposts here in Boston are doing very well.
I’d love to see more ramen shops.
Denver has 'em. To each their own, I guess.
Huh, I was unaware of this, but there’s one near my office. What do you recommend for lunch?
There’s a little hole in the wall in Niwot that simply rocks. They only serve ramen on Sundays because it is a one man outfit and he makes the noodles by hand.
My soup favorites are Kare Lomen (with chicken or shrimp) and Chili Ramen (with chicken)
My favorite non-soup dish is Yasai Katsu Curry (vegetarian)
The soups are lighter for lunch.
It’s a good question. I wish we had some around here. I’d eat it, super spicy, all the time.
If you want anything a little more spicy, ask for a bottle of their chili oil. A little on the surface of the soup, yum yum yum.
Explain to me why I need a ramen restaurant if I have a phở restaurant nearby. I’m not being snarky; just trying to understand the differences.
Atlanta has lots of phở restaurants, but I’m not aware of any ramen places.
ETA: I guess Atlanta does have some ramen options, but I haven’t tried them.
I can go to a Japanese super market in the burbs and they have a food court that serves Japanese fresh ramens and udon etc but no ramen restaurant per se that I know of. I’d love to see some open up.
In the US we tend to do US Italian food instead. It’s entirely cultural. We go for sauces. They go for broths.
So probably the same reason you can’t find Italian restaurants in Japan.(If you do expect it to be terrible because they are.)
I’m in Western Washington- an area with enough Japanese places that within the past few years there was article in the New York Times with the focus “what’s up with Puget Sound eating so much teriyaki?” You’d think we’d have some ramen to go with, but usually there’s just miso soup or wonton for the fancier places. I can only think of a few ramen place in Seattle, and none in Olympia, whereas I can tell you at least 10 places just around the Olympia-Lacey-Tumwater area that do pho.
I agree with silenus- I know what good ramen is like, but when I hear the ramen, I first think about Maruchan or Cup Noodles.
Pho is a rice noodle in a traditionally thin, clear beef broth. Ramen is a wheat noodle often in a rich pork, chicken, soy or miso broth. They are REALLY different, but there is a place for both. Try them all!
In the Chicago suburbs, there are places here and there for Pho, but good Ramen is damn hard to find.
Ramen has been decreed by the hipster College of Cardinals as “unhip.”
Look, Ramen is considered cheap… as it should be. Even in it’s purest form, homemade noodles, with rich Konbu based broth, miso, and kochujang… veg, meat, and anything else real… corn, fresh chiles, and Napa Cabbage. Sometimes people think of ramen as Chef Boyardee, when they could get Chef Batali. The price is negligible… In japan even the common stuff is cheap, in A,erica even the uncommon stuff is expensive. If I could get a Good, fully loaded, homewmade, ramen bowl for 5 dollars, I think I could compete with Subway… or at least a Bahn mi’.
I think most Americans equate ramen with Top Ramen. You know, the 25-cent instant stuff you survived on during your college days. No, just no.
SF Bay Area has some fairly solid ramen joints in Orenchi, Santouka, and Santa Ramen. But within the US, I think the LA area can’t be beat.
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The “teriyaki” served in the Seattle area is a local phenomenon; it has nothing to do with Japan besides the name.
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I’d agree with the idea that pho has exploited the niche that ramen restaurants would be best suited for.
I think the whole idea that there is some deep reason that certain particular types of restaurant are popular in a given region while other types are not is mistaken. The types of restaurant that are available in a region are more a matter of whether anyone has tried to open up such a restaurant or has done a marketing campaign for such a restaurant than whether the people of that area like the food. Pho restaurants were unknown in the U.S. fifty years ago. Now they are common in certain regions of the U.S., mostly by being spread by immigrants from Vietnam after the Vietnam War. Ramen restaurants haven’t gotten that push. If they did, perhaps they also might be popular. It’s more a matter of luck and marketing than of anything intrinsic in people’s tastes.
You can go to any Japanese grocery store and buy the soft ramen, not the dry dehydrated instant kind, and get kinda close to the freshly made ramen taste sans the toppings like slice of beef and veges, etc.