For a little post-tennis victory Japanese treat, I headed to Asahi Ramen in West LA with my vanquished tennis foe to get some…ummm ramen. Now don’t be fooled by the name of the restaurant, as it apparently has nothing to do with delicious Asahi beer. Confused myself, I took the liberty of looking up Asahi on the old interwebs and found that Asahi is the name of about ten different towns and cities in Japan, so for the name to carry over into both beer and ramen isn’t that surprising. Anyway, enough with geography and economics, let’s get to the food.
I took a good, hard look at the menu and found a ramen with my name on it. It was called Curry Ramen and could be mine for a small fee of $7.50. I ordered it with beef and then asked for it to be extra spicy. My foe told me this would cost me an extra 30 cents…a small price to pay for spice in my curry. We ordered it to go and each got our own bag, containing two to-go containers. I was told that the noodles were in one, while the broth was in the other. This made sense, because no one likes a soggy noodle.
I opened up my styrofoams and attempted to perform the very difficult step of combining noodles with broth. It wasn’t easy because the noodles had become inseparable friends in the process and I had to start with small clumps of noodles at a time. Part of me was tempted to simply eat the noodles with the curry and then drink the broth after, but eventually I was able to combine the two containers into one supermeal.
With their powers combined, the ramen tasted pretty oishii. The mix had just enough spice to make my lips burn, but not so much to make me uncomfortable. The curry added an interesting taste element to the mix that I had never had in ramen, but really kinda liked. I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t too much beef in it and also kind of missed the ability to customize my ramen that I had at Hakata Ramen Shinsengumi. It’s possible that I could have customized this, but there was nothing telling me I could. Oh well, perhaps I am just spoiled. Ultimately, I knew that this ramen would make a drunk unvegan very happy, which is really what you want in a good ramen.
