Re-reading this today it sounds a little snippy. Apologies if I came across as snippy.
I’m still waiting for shabu-shabu restaurants to hit the scene. There was one near where I used to live in Torrance, CA, and it was wonderful.
Not making this up: There’s a Hunan restaurant out in the suburbs around here that offers “Fish Head and Tripe Soup” for $17.95.
No, not even then. They’d have to pay me a HELL of a lot more than 17.95 to get me to eat that.
Sure, that’s what you say now. Don’t let us find you alone in a Hunan restaurant hugging a large bowl of fish head and tripe soup… man, what combination…
MMmmm. We went to Shisen Ramen in Torrance last night and I had the Black Garlic ramen with added charsu. Deliciousness.
Well, there certainly a buttload of ramen places around the bay area. It’s a favorite topic of discussion on the local Chowhound message board. We rate them according to quality, and it’s well nigh impossible to get into the most popular ones at lunchtime. The current foodies’ darling is Orenchi in Santa Clara, who serve a milky-colored tonkotsu broth with al dente noodles and the world’s most perfectly soft-boiled egg. I patronized them when they first opened in their corner of a deserted strip mall, but thanks to yelp and Chowhound, they’re now impossible to get into.
Now I’ve got a ramen craving, thanks to this thread! I’ll have to go to someplace other than Orenchi, though.
ETA: I’ve had black garlic ramen, too, ShibbOleth. Delectable stuff, huh? A place called Maru-Ichi Ramen in Mountain View, California makes it.
any ramen places around DC?
There are a surprising number of them around here but my friends find me a pain in the butt whenever it comes up. For what shabu shabu places charge, I expect the restaurant to do the work of preparing my meal. I can boil my own meat at home.
The same issue comes up with fondue restaurants and Build-a-Bear. I’m amazed at the number of businesses build on the model of “come pay us to let you do the work.”
And in turn, I would argue that Instant ramen is to proper ramen as an In-N-Out Double-Double is to an actual, non-fast-food burger.
Don’t get me wrong, I like In-N-Out, but there’s absolutely no comparison between a home-grilled burger and one from a drive-through.
I don’t know about this. What would be harder about making ramen than any other soup? It would probably certainly be easier to make than Pho from some of the recipes I have seen. It might be a bit more labor intensive, perhaps, than some “fast food” items from the jump… but as far as quickness once the mise en place is ready, I’m sure it’s one of the fastest of the fast foods and can probably be put out in much less than a minute per order. And reasonably, for pennies per serving as far as the actual soup goes.
Sure, making the proper and best secret broth seems to be the trick, but once you got that down it should be no more of an operation than any good Soup Kitchen or Restaurant and thinking of those places, like the Soup Nazi’s restaurant, they have to make several different kinds of soup daily… making Ramen, not so much, maybe several large stockpots of maybe two bases, chicken and beef and then the “add-ins”. You simply cook the meat as the stock goes and slice per order. The noodles cook infinitely fast. I mean, maybe that is why it is such a mainstay in Asia, because, it’s fast, cheap, and easy to make a tasty bowl of it.
I could also reasonably assume that if you set the operation up right there would be little to no waste in a Ramen kitchen, due to its culinary nature. Waste is a huge problem that affects many restaurants’ bottom line.
I could also see the Chipotle structure or business plan working equally well for a Saimin/Ramen/Udon/Pho/Raymun shop.
Ramen is essentially fast food, which is why I picked that analogy. It is served in some nice sit-down Chinese restaurants as one of the many dishes on offer, but dedicated ramen-ya are fast food joints, or the Japanese equivalent of a greasy diner if they’re a mom-and-pop. I have never been to a ramen place that aspired to any higher than than a family restaurant style of presentation.
Or is a Dennny’s the kind of place you were thinking of to get a good burger?
I think Americans need to be drawn closer to the idea that homemade Ramen or an Asian noodle soup is exactly like Granny’s Chicken N’ Noodles/Soup with maybe some Asian Overtones. We can’t help that most of our only experiences with it have been packaged. It would be like a Chinese National having only had Lipton’s Chicken Noodle Soup packets and basing his entire conception around that without ever having had Amish, Ohioan, Pennsylvanian, Midwestern Chicken n’ Noodles. Or anybody’s grandma’s Chicken Soup.
That’s the trick: getting the recipe right. It’s kind of like saying, “I don’t know what’s so hard about making sandwiches, it’s just bread, spread, toppings, and meat.” There are a lot of different combinations and possibilities. It’s easy to make a crappy sandwich, it’s hard to make a really good one and do it right just about every time.
You can make it fast, but you have to make it right. The noodles are easiest part to mess up. If you overdo them, they’re basically inedible, not just from a taste standpoint, but also because they won’t stand up to any soak time. If they’re underdone, they’re awful, and letting them sit in the soup doesn’t fix it. The good ramen places have that absolutely dialed in. There was a story I read a couple of years back (found a Japan Times article online about him here) about a guy who took five years to develop his recipe. Sure, he’s a perfectionist, but he’d have to be to succeed in competing with guys who have been eating ramen since they were kids and making it since they were probably in their teens.
You may not have to be an Ivan to succeed in the US market. You might be able to get away with second-rate stuff. But anyone who has had the real thing would know right away, and even people who haven’t can recognize quality and care when they see it.
Well, it just so happens I started working at a McDonald’s in my Teens, and started eating Ramen around the same time… hell, what else could somebody making $3.65 afford?
Actually, the main places to get teriyaki, sushi – or, for that matter, ramen, udon, shabu-shabu, teppan-yaki, and sometimes even soba and/or yaki-niku are in Japanese restaurants, which are just about all over the place.
The discussion seemed to dwell on the fact that the noodles are not sold as “fast food” the way pho, burgers, and Seattle-ized Yakitori (love that stuff, even if one of the other contributors was correct in saying it’s not authentic) is sold. The one dish I haven’t seen imported is Okonomiyaki (sp?) and I’m VERY GLAD nobody sells Japan’s version of ‘pizza’ here in the States.
—G!
…Or for the beef binary, beef and barley soup.
I could see buckwheat and/or barley flour noodles substituting… maybe have a Grandma and Grandpa “gaijin” soup as certain specials. Essentially a broad noodle Beef and Chickn Noodles.