Ramen is fantastic, right? I mean, we can all agree on that. But we can also agree that summer in Phoenix is not the time for ramen. So, although I knew Obon in Scottsdale had great ramen from carrying out a couple times, I made a different choice when I decided to stick around long enough to eat in the restaurant.

I began with something not Japanese at all. It was called Fuku Wings, which were coated in a spicy gochujang sauce. Gochujang, for those who may not know, is actually a Korean sauce and I have yet to eat a take on it that I haven’t liked. These were no different and they were nothing short of fantastic. It was a little sweeter than a typical gochujang sauce, but packed a spicy punch. There was a little crispiness to the outside and plenty of juiciness on the inside. With such a strong connection between Japan and Korea (albeit an often contentious one), I let the gochujang wings slide on account of being so delicious.

For my main dish I went with Street Noodles, which are spicy yakisoba noodles with peanuts, minced chicken and bean sprouts. I am an unabashed lover of yakisoba and calling them street noodles is pretty accurate because they are generally cheap comfort food. Obon dressed theirs up and I must say I had no complaints. They were mighty spicy and flavorful, with plenty of chicken mixed in there to keep a healthy balance with the noodles. They’re not your everyday yakisoba, but unless you’re living in Japan no yakisoba is and these certainly got the job done.

Between the noodles and the wings, Obon handed me some upscale Asian food in just the right way. Perhaps more important than anything else, Obon is ready and willing to show the people of Scottsdale that Japanese food is much more than sushi and teriyaki chicken. And when the weather drops to whatever passes for a low temperature a few months from now I know the ramen will be a welcome warmer in my belly.

When I left LA to move to Phoenix I had one major concern. No, it wasn’t the heat in the summer, it was the lack of ramen. You see, LA spoils you with a lot of Asian food, but ramen is easily one of the best of them. People go through life only knowing ramen from a dry cup and I feel terrible for those people, but is it better to have ramen and lost it than to never have had ramen at all? Lost or not, ramen has returned to my life in the form of Ramen Hood in Scottsdale. I headed out for the grand opening to see if it would fulfill my needs.

Ramen Hood offers customized ramen – like a custom burger spot but with ramen instead. You can choose your noodles and broth type, then pick from a bunch of other ingredients.

I opted for regular ramen noodles (as in not gluten free) and tonkotsu (rich pork) as my broth. Other broth options were shoyu (soy), spicy miso, tomato and vegetarian. I’ve always leaned towards tonkotsu and wasn’t disappointed in that decision.

It’s hard to have a bowl of ramen without a soft boiled egg, so I made sure to snag one of those. I also chose naruto (slices of a fish roll, named that because naruto means whirlpool and there are swirls in the roll), pickled ginger, seasoned bamboo, spicy miso paste and black garlic oil. The latter two enriched the broth, while the former three were there to enhance the dish. Oh and let’s not forget the cha siu pork, which was more thinly sliced and less melt-in-your-mouth than I’m used to.

I loved that Ramen Hood has Ramune (pronounced rah-moo-nuh), which is a crazy Japanese drink that is opened by popping a marble through the top. Melon is the best flavor; tell your friends.

Tempura bacon! Never seen this before and holy cow it’s amazing. I mean, nobody likes tempura vegetables anyway.

It’s really hard to beat having a new ramen place open right down the street from you. Especially when you are in somewhat of an authentic Asian food desert like Scottsdale. It was definitely a mistake to open a hot soup restaurant in the middle of the Phoenix summer, but  the ramen is good enough to keep Ramen Hood going strong until the colder months bring in the big crowds.

The Mekong Plaza in Mesa is a great place to get real, authentic Asian food to bring people back to their roots or at least to get them away from crappy Americanized Asian food. And among those more traditional restaurants is something that doesn’t fit the mold at all. It’s called Kingo Bowl, and it has taken the concept of rice bowls with molecular sous vide.

You can pick a pre-made bowl or channel your inner Millennial to customize your own creation. I did the latter, and built mine with steak (essentially beef tataki), brown rice, a hot spring egg, dried cranberries and sunflower seeds. I asked for a sauce recommendation and was pointed to the black pepper sauce, so I went with it.

The bowl was beautiful, kingly even. The beef was incredibly tender, if not quite as rare as I would have liked. The hot spring egg was nothing short of exhilarating. Probably the best thing to come out of a hot spring since me, the last time I was in a hot spring. Of course, it didn’t actually come out of a hot spring, but it was that good.I loved the addition of the cranberries and the sunflower seeds, but there was one aspect of the bowl that just didn’t jive with me: the sauce. Simply put, it was overwhelming. I’ll admit that I am not the biggest black pepper guy in the first place, but I can appreciate it when used properly. In this case it really just covered up flavor without doing much to add to it.

And yet, despite the sauce (and the fact that it was recommended), there was something about Kingo Bowl’s creativity and mildly flawed execution that I truly enjoyed. Perhaps with one of the other sauces I would be proclaiming that the old world cuisine at Mekong Plaza needs to make way for more modernist takes like Kingo Bowl. But alas, that sauce had me a bit soured and looking for more. Yet, I am certain I will find that more with another visit to Kingo Bowl, because I have every intention to return.

Long before it was cool to do fusion food, Chino Bandido arrived on the scene in Phoenix. This was back in 1990 when interracial marriages were barely okay, let alone interracial food. But Chino Bandido found something that worked – Asian and Hispanic food and hasn’t looked back. So while the name is a reference to Chinese and Mexican food, things like Cuban Beans and Teriyaki Chicken tell a larger tale.

For those who have never been before (and for those who just love freebies), Chino Bandido lets you sample before you eat, and after trying out a few things I knew what I had to have. It began with a Jerk Chicken Quesadilla, some Jade Red Chicken, Cuban Beans and BBQ Pork Fried Rice. Outside of a crazy Las Vegas buffet, I had never had such a seemingly strange mix of food in one dish. Yet, it just worked.

Look, this is not where you go when you are looking for authentic Asian or Hispanic food. That doesn’t matter, because the food is that good. From the Jade Red Chicken’s fried up sweet and spicy combination to the Jerk Chicken’s hot rendezvous with cheese in the quesadilla. It’s all good and I can’t imagine being disappointed even if I had ordered everything completely differently.

Best of all, there is nothing pretentious about this place. Chino Bandido knows what it does, and the world is a better place because of it.

Arizona State University is home to about 90,000 students, and while they don’t all go to the main campus in Tempe, that is unbelievably massive. So, I figured they had to have some good ethnic food because when you throw out such a wide net the students can’t all be white. Thus, when given the option of a couple of different ramen spots, I picked Umami in Tempe because I thought it had a better chance of being good than one in another area. Plus, school was out for summer and that always helps.

The strange thing, though, is that Umami is park of a sort of restaurant “complex” called Shady Park. Shady Park also has a full bar (which I understand, because I assume every restaurant in Tempe becomes a bar after 10:00) and a pizzeria, which is about the furthest thing from ramen. Yet, Umami and the pizza spot actually operated out of two different kitchens, which was kind of cool.

But, to the ramen. I ordered up their Spicy Tan Tan Men, which was a chicken and pork bone broth, with garlic, ginger, white pepper, miso and strangely tahini for flavors. Plus, because it was spicy, there was some sort of chili pepper flavoring in there. I added a soft egg to the mix and eagerly anticipated my meal.

I’ll start by saying I was disappointed that there was no pork in the bowl, which I had actually just assumed would be there. Moreover, I was similarly disappointed to find spinach in the bowl, which is something I had never seen in ramen before and hope to never again. That said, a close look at the menu would have revealed these. Now, onto the good, which is that this was actually a pretty solid bowl of ramen. The noodle were cooked well, if not overly tasty. The broth was spicy and flavorful, albeit not as rich as I like. And the egg was simply perfection.

That said, while it will be hard to find ramen to compete with what I could get in the LA area, Umami could have been a whole lot worse. I know that doesn’t exactly sound like a ringing endorsement, but until I see what other ramen is in the Phoenix area it will have to do.

Sometimes the world feels dominated by American chain restaurants. It seems that anywhere you go you can find McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway and KFC. Yet, we are not the only ones pushing our fast food abroad, as evidenced by MOS Burger. MOS Burger is a Japanese fast food burger spot that I was a pretty big fan of when I was living in Japan, and I was so happy to find that it is also available in Taiwan (as well as a number of other Asian countries, and even Australia) that I had to have some.

Thus, I paid MOS Burger a visit to try two very different burgers. The first was their breakfast burger, which was topped with a fried egg and bacon, as well as lettuce and tomato that I made sure to order without. Unfortunately, this did not live up to my memories, as it was pretty plain and the burger was kind of rubbery. I had always remembered MOS Burger to be a step above the rest of fast food, but this was not.

Undaunted, I then went for the rice burger. I got a normal patty again with teriyaki sauce and an egg, but in the bun made primarily of rice (with barley and millet in there as well). Now this brought back memories of old. The burger just seemed to work better with the rice patty, which came served in special wrapper to allow me to eat the burger without the bun falling apart. Also, rice as a bun is just awesome, especially when you consider MOS Burger has been doing this for decades while the rest of the world seems to have recently realized all the different foods that can be used for buns.

So, while my MOS Burger experience started low, the rice bun brought it back up. MOS Burger is still unquestionably fast food and while that may not be for everyone, it worked just fine for me.

You don’t really associate Japan with fried chicken. I mean, sure, if you’ve spent enough time in Japan or with Japanese food you have undoubtedly discovered karaage and more, but those aren’t exactly Earth-shattering compared to the fried chicken of the American South or even the fried chicken of Japan’s neighbor buddy (kind of), Korea. But Tokyo Fried Chicken in Monterey Park is doing its best to change that perception. So when it came down to choosing new restaurants or eating at old favorites before making the move to Phoenix, Tokyo Fried Chicken is where I found myself eating my last reviewable meal as a resident of Southern California (at least for now!).

As there were three of us, we decided to order the Meal for 3. This included 9 pieces of chicken, 3 sides, rice and some sort of cabbage-y thingy that I wouldn’t need to have anything to do with. For the sides we got the curry creamed corn and upgraded the other two to mac and cheese and brussels sprouts. The last of these was obviously not my idea, but I was content just to eat the other two.

We swapped out a couple of the pieces of chicken for chicken breast because one of my companions was a white meat only racist, and unfortunately this made the food take a little longer to cook. But, soon enough it was ready with the sauces on the side to go with it (Ponzu, Spicy Ponzu and a taste of the Yuzu Pepper sauce just to see what it was like, which was pretty solid). Oh, we even got gloves to eat the chicken with so we wouldn’t get our hands dirty.

Anyway, the chicken was nothing short of incredible. The breading was all sort of crispy, while having no trouble clinging to the chicken. It was just thick enough and also flavorful in all the right ways. The chicken also managed to stay perfectly juicy – even the white meat that I ate at the end because there was extra. I was a fan of the Spicy Ponzu sauce, but really you couldn’t go wrong.

As for the sides, the curry creamed corn was exactly what it sounds like. So, if you like corn and curry, this is your dish. If you are expecting something unique and different than creamed corn, this is your dish. But if you’re hoping for something life-changing as a lover of corn in curry, you may be disappointed. And as for the mac and cheese, I’m actually going to weirdly penalize it for trying too hard to be different. The flavor was unique, but it could also be described as “off.” This, of course, did not stop me from devouring every last bite of the stuff, but if I had to do it all over again I would have traded out the mac for more fried chicken.

And that was my overall feeling as I left. Tokyo Fried Chicken is simply amazing at making fried chicken. And all the while the sides are just along for the ride on the coattails of the chicken. Truth be told, that was just fine by me.

Bacon and Avocado Musubi – What Floats UR Boat

This place specializes in literally only 3 musubi options and they are all nothing like what you would expect from “sushi.” If you get all three they come in a boat, but I needed to conserve stomach space and stuck with one filled with chipotle caramelized bacon and avocado. The avocado was insanely creamy and the bacon was insanely perfect. The rice and seaweed added perfect balance to an already great mix of food.

Winner Winner – The Naughty Churro

I love me a good churro, and I love me some fried chicken and waffles. While this sandwich of churro “buns,” fried chicken and maple butter isn’t exactly how you would picture a churro, it is easily the must gluttonously delicious thing I could find at the 626 Night Market and worth every penny/calorie.

Pix*e Halo Halo – Mix*E

I don’t know about you, but I’m not a big fan of sweet red beans. Maybe it’s the gringo in me, but I love me some Halo Halo, a Filipino dessert filled with crushed ice, coconut, jellies, ube ice cream and pudding, plus those sweet beans. Fortunately, Mix*E offers a beanless version that is fantastic.

Balut – Kapamilya Filipino Restaurant

Once upon a time I visited the Philippines. Unfortunately at the time I hadn’t heard of Balut and when I came back and started meat blogging I knew I had to try it out. Sadly it took until now to try it. Basically, it’s a boiled, fertilized duck egg and tastes much better than it looks. There will certainly be a full Strange Eats post to read eventually, but until now enjoy this video:

A great ramen is hard to find. Good ramen, not so much, but great yes. So when Slurping Turtle in Chicago got so big that they decided to open up an outpost in Ann Arbor, I assumed great things. So on my last visit to Michigan amidst weather worthy of ramen, I made sure to make a stop in Ann Arbor for some slurping.

I quickly realized that Slurping Turtle was not simply a ramen spot, but a full on izakaya-esque Japanese restaurant capable of producing anything my heart could desire. Nonetheless, I had my heart set on ramen and it remained there. I settled on the Tan Tan Men Ramen, which the menu described as spicy with pork meatballs, pork chashu, pork miso, bok choy and bean sprouts.

And it was damn good. The ramen noodles were perfectly prepared, while the bok choy and sprouts were easily dismissable. Most importantly, the meatballs were perfectly tender and juicy while the chashu had a hint of sweet without the bonus fat that chashu usually comes with. Usually the fat adds great flavor, but in this case it wasn’t missed. The egg was boiled to a level of greatness in which it was perfectly runny inside. And then there was the broth, which was packed with great flavor and a spiciness that made me quite happy.

Undoubtedly, Slurping Turtle is a great ramen. It’s not the best ramen ever, but it’s certainly a place I would like in my town to get me through the winter.

EDIT: Grit & Grace is now a noodle bar, but I’m guessing it is just as delicious as before.

While some parts of the country might have Asian fusion around every corner, Pittsburgh has (most likely for the better) avoided much of this. There is, however, a spot downtown called Grit & Grace that has welcomed that sort of cuisine. It starts with a little something they call American Dim Sum. It’s nothing at all like actual dim sum aside from the fact that it is in small servings, but it is quite delicious. We had some of the Pork Belly Bites (with orange, chili, garlic and ginger) and Kimchi Balls (with rice and cheese). They were both incredible, and the balls surprisingly so because I have a rational hatred of kimchi and these tasted nothing like it.

We also had ourselves two orders of their Short Ribs, which came on cream cheese biscuits topped with aged white cheddar cheese and bearnaise sauce. These were simply incredible. Like far too good for their own good. Each order only came with two, but I wished they would have come with 30 because I could have eaten them forever.

For the main course, I split a couple dishes. The first was their Chicken Meatball Ramen, which came with a one hour egg (whatever that means), confit chicken thigh, more kimchi, schmaltz roasted carrots, coriander noodle and of course the meatballs. I, of course, wanted nothing to do with the carrots and kimchi, but after all I was splitting the dish. It was the best ramen I have had in Pittsburgh, and while I usually prefer my ramen simpler, somehow this complexity made it great. Not to mention, the chicken was so tender it should be illegal.

I also split the Braised Goat, which came with appams, garlic/ginger smashed potatoes, curry, creme fraiche and lime. It was a unique mixture of ingredients, but one that worked well. It was put together in a way that you could basically build your own wrap and mine was quite tasty. I didn’t like it as much as the ramen, but it was still welcome.

Grit & Grace turned out to be far better than I expected. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it was still great. Each level of my meal seemed to be well thought-out and unique enough to not leave me wanting something different. Asian fusion isn’t dead, at least not in Pittsburgh.