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I noticed La-men springing into existence maybe a month or two ago on the way to a friend’s house. At first, my first instinct was to make fun of it. “La-men! Ha! They can’t even spell it right!” But later, when I found out it was actually run by Japanese people, I was intrigued. My friend told me that he heard it was decent, “but do you really want to go there instead of Gomen?” Gomen, my favorite ramenya in the area, called out to me from just a few minutes away. But duty calls!

La-men is located in a tiny strip mall near a 7-11. The menu doesn’t have a lot of items, which I count as a plus. There’re a few types of ramen, some rice bowls, and gyoza (more on the gyoza later). I wanted fried rice, but no such luck. I opted for combo #3 with shoyu ramen.

Here’s the salad. You get your choice of citrus-shoyu dressing or some other dressing. It was lightly flavored and pretty good. blah blah blah…it’s a salad.

When I saw down and looked at the condiments, I regretted not ordering the shio ramen. Not only was there a container of basil flakes, its label encouraged “try me on shio ramen.” Really?! Basil flakes on shio ramen?!

Ok, here’s the problem with the “gyoza.” They were exactly as pictured above and on the menu. When ordering the combo, the lady behind the counter shyly admitted “yeah, they’re not “real” gyoza,” then added “they’re in gravy.” But you know what? They were pretty good. The gravy was light and tasty and went well with the wontons–I mean, gyoza. The gyoza tasted exactly like wontons with gyoza filling…meaty, and garlicky like some other gyoza I’ve had. Even the gyoza skin was doughy like a wonton or Chinese dumpling.

And finally, the shoyu ramen. It looked pretty good. The egg was obviously hard-boiled, but marinated. The pork looked decent. Lots of onions, that’s good. And sesame seeds in a shoyu ramen. Ok, that can work…

…But wait…there seems to be something odd-looking in the soup, next to the egg…

Whoa! Hello, bamboo shoot! That’s something I’ve never seen in a ramen before. A large, marinated bamboo shoot. It was crunchy, but too shoyu-y. If it was marinated less, it would’ve been delicious. Definitely a surprise! So how was the rest of the ramen? The noodles were great! Sure they were mass-produced curly factory noodles, but they were cooked perfectly and had the right amount of chew. And that was the highlight of the ramen. The soup was decent but dull, with just a hint of a slight molasses-like sweetness at the end. The egg was as expected: a good, marinated, hard-boiled egg. The pork showed some promise. While the chashu was lean, it wasn’t tough, and one piece had just enough fat to tease me with an extra burst of flavor.

La-men is one of those little hole-in-the-walls that I’ll likely check out from time to time, just to see if they’ve gotten better. The portions are good (the bowl above is actually a “small”), the cashier is friendly, and you can fill up on free iced tea. The shoyu ramen gets a just-above-average 6.

La-Men
10488 Valley View St Unit 3
Buena Park, CA‎ 90620
(714) 952-1258‎
Mon-Fri: 11am – 9pm
Sun: 12pm – 7:30pm
Closed Saturday

Cash Only!

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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.

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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.

The wife and I had an hour to check out the scene, but unfortunately we weren’t very hungry. As tempting as the foie gras ramen sounded, we decided to split a spicy miso ramen and a side order of pork feet gyoza.

After a short wait, our food was brought out on a wooden plank. I wished the server would’ve left the plank: It really added to the presentation. The food was accompanied by paper cards describing each item. This was a fun idea, but one that slightly backfired, which I’ll get to in a bit.

We tried the gyoza first. It was tasty, mild and had a predominantly pork flavor. The texture was a mixture of minced and coarse. If a Mexican restaurant offered gourmet shredded pork gyozas, this was what they would taste like.

The ramen presentation was gorgeous. We probably spent more time taking pictures and oo-ing and aah-ing the ramen than we did actually eating it. The staff seemed amusing by our antics.

The ramen soup was tasty and spicy, but the miso flavor was on the mild side and a bit overwhelmed by the spiciness. The wife was a bit bothered by its oiliness. I had no issues with it.

The curly yellow noodles were ordinary factory-made noodles, but were cooked perfectly. When paired with the Tokyo negi (onions) and sesame seeds, it became something wonderful. I would’ve been happy with nothing more than a bowl of these noodles with the negi and sesame seeds.

All the other toppings were a mixed bag. On one hand, the kikurage (wood-eared mushrooms) and charred garlic bits added a nice depth to the bowl. On the other hand, and this is were the paper cards failed, the “marinated poached egg” was neither marinated nor poached. I really looking forward to a nice hanjuku egg. What I got was a non-marinated, tantalizingly soft hard-boiled egg. It was as if they left the eggs on the stove, forgot about it for just a minute, then decided to serve it anyway after realizing that they also forgot to marinate it.

And about halfway through the bowl I suddenly looked up and asked my wife, “did we accidentally eat the nori or something?” Yep. They forgot to put a piece of nori in the bowl. Not a big deal, but considering the place was practically empty and that they went the trouble of describing what came with the order…tsk tsk.

I also had high hopes for the kurobuta pork belly chashu. Just writing that makes my mouth water. The chashu slices looked appropriately fatty and thickly sliced, but the preparation was uneven. The chashu was well marinated, and the fatty sections were deliciously tender, but the lean halves of the chashu were overcooked and borderline hard. The taste was spot-on, but the contrasting texture was just too distracting.

Yatai Ramen Twist smacks of trendy, gourmet fare, but the execution falls short. It’s not hard to imagine that Chef Shimamura could make great ramen, if he and his crew paid just a little more time to the food prep than the food presentation. Their spicy miso ramen gets a not-bad-but-not-great 6.5 out of 10.

Yatai @ BREADBAR
8718 W 3rd St.
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(310) 205-0124
Yatai Ramen Twist until July 24
Mon-Sat: 5-10pm

By the way, you can still order bread and pastries during Yatai hours. I recommend their pistachio macaron!

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Any help would be greatly appreciated!

After some digging, we determined that it was not Nissin’s Chiken ramen, and she continues:

The image I’m thinking of is somewhat similar to this…

This is also going back to c.1983, so the possibility that it’s gone for good is quite real.

So can anyone out there help out? Show off your instant ramen knowledge! Leave your suggestions and/or questions in the comments below.

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This is what happens when you wait a full year before reviewing a restaurant…I went to Ramen Setagaya’s University Place location a couple of months after it opened last year, and now, when I’ve finally gotten my act together enough to write the review, I find out it closed about a month ago. Sigh.

I was in New York for only two nights on a business trip, and my first attempt at dining at Ramen Setagaya resulted in a fail. I decided to go to Ippudo instead the second night, and after walking for an hour around Union Square Park to digest, I got ambitious. I headed to Setagaya again, determined to get in a last ramen hurrah before I left.

Located about a 15-minute walk away from Ippudo, Ramen Setagaya @ University Park is worlds apart in terms of both taste and ambiance. Ippudo is dark and trendy. Setagaya is bright and down-to-earth. Ippudo’s ramen is deep and rich. Setagaya specializes in the lighter shio ramen.

I immediately liked Setagaya’s atmosphere, from the irasshaimase! when you enter, to the brick walls and the counter facing the open kitchen. The menu gives you a very different impression. Their menu reads like something you’d find at a Michelin-starred restaurant filled with people in tuxedos sipping martinis shaken, not stirred. Reading about “best ingredients from Japan (90% importing from Japan),” “Vietnam’s Kahn Hoa sea salt” used in the shio ramen, apparently one of the “three best salts in the world,” and the “best premium Japanese soy sauce, Sekigahara Tamari Shoyu, for Imperial Family,” I suddenly felt a bit underdressed. Undeterred, I ordered a simple bowl of shio ramen.

While I waited for my ramen, I looked around and took pictures, snapping a few extra pics of the cook grilling chashu, who was eyeing me suspiciously and/or posing for the camera. The place has the warm look and feel of a friendly little ramenya in Any-machi (town), Japan.

When the ramen arrived, the artistic presentation of the ramen made me smile. I slurped away, savoring the clean and light salty broth and the chewy noodles. To be honest, I lost my notes and I can’t quite remember all the details of the ramen. I do remember thinking “this is what all the food hosts on Japanese TV shows mean when they say things like ‘Heee, I can taste the ocean!’” after sipping the clear soup. I can also say I thoroughly enjoyed the grilled, tasty pork and the hanjuku egg, a personal weakness of mine. The light, refreshing ramen and the friendly atmosphere ended my trip on a perfect note, and I’m sad that this particular location closed down.

I may not remember some of the details of my ramen, but I do remember being as impressed with Ramen Setagaya as I was with Ippudo NY, except for different reasons. Ramen Setagaya’s shio ramen gets a satisfying 7.5.

Ramen Setagaya
90 University Place (Bet. 11th & 12th Street) This location is now closed.
Try their main location at 141 First Ave., New York, NY 10003
Tel: 212-529-2740

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Who’s seen Tampopo, raise your hand? How about the Ramen Girl? And who’s heard of Udon, the movie?

“Udon,” which came out in Japan several years ago but somehow never made it to the States, will be premiering at the L.A. Film Festival on June 19. It may not be about ramen, but this sumptuously filmed movie about the next best thing will have you craving a bowl of noodles. See why award winning food critic Jonathan Gold chose this as the food-themed movie to present.

For details and tickets, go to the Los Angeles Film Festival web site, or call 1-866-FilmFest (1-866.345.6337).

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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).

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It’s been a while since my last trip to New York. It’s been so long that instead of having to go to Ippudo, New York again, Ippudo came to Costa Mesa. So how did the Costa Mesa experience compare to “the real deal” in the Big Apple?

My first impression of Ippudo’s NY location was that it was really inconspicuous. There’s a small sign with their Japanese name ??? and a much smaller, almost invisible sign in English. The night-club/trendy restaurant-inspired interior is dark and intimate. Large, communal tables take up most of the space, and there’s a line of brightly lit booths along the side, decorated in a present-meets-past way that gives you the feel of being in some modern Egyptian restaurant that just happens to serve ramen. It must be the hiragana-as-hieroglyphs running along the wall.

After a few minutes’ wait, I was seated in the back corner at one of the communal tables. While Ippudo is famous for their Akamaru Shin-aji, “Ramen King” Shigemi Kawahara�s modernized version of hakata ramen, I decided to start with the basics, and try the Shiromaru Hakata Classic, described on the menu as “the original tonkotsu.” A quick chat with the friendly waitress lead me to order a side order of chashu. (There is nothing on the menu to indicate that the side order of chashu is different than the chashu that comes with the ramen.)

I’ve often complained about the lukewarm soup at several local ramen shops, and I was pleasantly surprised by Ippudo’s declaration that their ramen “is served extra hot, so please use caution when indulging in our signature dish.” The ramen comes with a nice assortment of toppings: chashu made from Berkshire pork, kikurage, beni sh?ga, menma, sesame seeds, scallions, and 1/2 of a hard boiled egg. Let me get my biggest gripe out of the way first: really? A hardboiled egg? Seriously. A $13 bowl of ramen comes with a non-marinated, plain hard-boiled egg half?

Boring hard-boiled egg aside, everything else worked well together. The toppings meshed with the noodles and soup. The noodles, made fresh in the basement, were ultra thin, hard, and a bit floury. They paired well with the soup, and the texture was a great contrast to the thick soup. And the soup…the soup! Deliciously rich, the soup was almost gelatin-like and had such a smooth taste. It was, at the same time, full of pork flavors, yet not too “pork-y.”

The chashu deserves its own paragraph. The thin chashu that comes with the ramen is decent. Wait, that’s it? Just “decent”? That deserves a full paragraph? Let me explain. The chashu that comes with the ramen is slightly fatty, well-marinated, and yes, decent. The chashu was flavorful, but somewhat on the dry and hard side. But the real star is the side order of chashu you can order. The side order chashu, by comparison, is fantastic! This chashu has more fat, which combines with the lean meat to create a luscious experience in your mouth. Not only is it fatty, but it’s packed with flavor. It doesn’t so much melt in your mouth as it lingers and dances a seductive dance on your tongue. Anyone who goes to Ippudo must, and I mean must shell out the few extra dollars to order the side chashu.

Ippudo was a real treat, even though I ended paying around $20 total for a bowl of ramen. At Ippudo, it’s not just about the ramen, but about the experience of eating at a legendary ramenya: it’s a pilgrimage any self-respecting ramen fan in New York should make.

Ippudo’s Shiromaru Hakata Classic gets a 7.5 with regular chashu, 8.5 with the side chashu.

(A quick apology here for the photos. Except for a few random areas around the booths and at one table, it is really dark in here. I had to read the menu by candlelight and I could barely see what I was eating.)

Ippudo NY
65 Fourth Avenue
New York, NY 10003-5220
(212) 388-0088
Mon-Thurs: 11am-3:30pm, 5pm-11:30pm
Fri-Sat: 11am-3:30pm, 5pm-12:30am
Sun: 11am-10:30pm

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