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.

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.

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.

On a drunken evening in Osaka, I vaguely recall punching buttons on an old school lotto-style machine at a ramen restaurant. The result was some of the most delicious drunk food I have ever eaten. Fast forward to 2012 and Tsujita continues its stranglehold on the ramen scene of Little Little Tokyo in West LA. Yet, it is not alone in ramen. Tatsu sits just down the road and has taken that machine concept I encountered in Osaka into modernity.

When you enter, a couple of tablets shine to the right and are used for ordering. Tatsu only offers two types of ramen (dry and brothy), but each is super customizable. My favorite part was selecting “I don’t agree with green onion” from the options as I selected regular brothy tonkotsu ramen with the custom options in the picture to the right. Fortunately, the fiancee opted for the dry broth so I could get a taste of both.

We took a seat at the bar and watched as the ramen cooks meticulously prepared each order. This certainly was not fast food.

The result was a whole lot better than I expected. My ramen was filled with skinny noodles that could have been a bit harder, but were still quite good. The sauce had great flavor, but I added some extra garlic for good measure. I mean hey, when is there ever really too much garlic? The chashiu pork tasted like typical chashiu pork, but it wasn’t nearly as fatty as some that I’ve encountered. I call that a win. A nice addition was the soft boiled egg, which had a delicious juicy yolky center.

The dry ramen was also pretty good, and a good option in the summer when a hot bowl of soup doesn’t sound too good. The noodles were a bit thicker and I’m pretty sure it could be considered tsukemen ramen, especially because it had a dipping sauce with it.

The end result of the meal was pretty joyful. No, the ramen didn’t blow my mind, but it was cooked just right and the modern ordering system not only reminded me of Japan, but also gave me a good amount of enjoyment.

Have you ever looked upon a meal and thought it was just too pretty to eat? It happens to the best of us, and to be perfectly frank, a pretty-looking meal is often disguising a lack of flavor or creativity. So when my buddy and I decided to head to Tsujita LA in West LA for lunch, I was a little concerned that their claim of “Artisan Noodles” would make for a pretty meal, but little else. But when we showed up and found an obscenely long line of people waiting to get a taste of the noodles, I thought again.

We walked in and got our name on the list, then proceeded to browse the Japanese Outlet store next door and even took a ride to Best Buy. By the time we returned, an hour had elapsed and it was just in time to be seated. The interior of the place had a pretty basic and functional design, with very few tables and a long bar-like row set up that we were seated at. What stood out, though, was the awesome ceiling design, which consisted of uneven wooden dowels that made for a pleasant undulating pattern. It was about as much as they could do to improve the little space, but after a few glances, I was more interested in the food itself.

The lunch menu essentially boiled down to two types of ramen. The first was your traditional tonkotsu ramen, and the other was tsukemen ramen, which differs from the traditional in that the noodles are kept separate from the broth and are dipped in the broth when eaten. It’s a cool concept and although good traditional ramen is hard enough to find, tsukemen is even more of a rarity. I went with the rarer of the two, but my buddy got the regular ramen so that we could get a taste of both. I ordered my tsukemen “chaa-shyo” style which meant it came with pork and a seasoned egg.

I didn’t take too long to arrive (despite warnings of a longer wait time than the regular ramen), and looked simply beautiful. But after an hour wait, I wasted no time destroying the beauty and began dipping the noodles into the broth. The taste was nothing short of delicious. The broth was way strong, but the noodles tempered it perfectly to combine for a perfectly rich flavor. The noodles themselves were thicker than regular ramen and almost had a yakisoba-esque texture to them. Which is great, because yakisoba is awesome.

I was happy to find a good amount of pork accompanying my noodles, but found each little slice to be about half-meat, half-fat. I love fat as much as the next guy, but there’s a difference between having it blended in with meat and simply chewing fat. Fortunately, the meaty halves tasted amazing in the broth and I left the fatty halves in to add even more flavor to the soup.

And finally, there was the egg, which was a really nice touch. As it had spent more time in the broth than anything else, it absorbed a nice bit of flavor that just burst in my mouth with every bite. Then, once the noodles had taken out a fair amount of the broth, I had the option to refill the broth bowl with hot water to make it more like a traditional ramen broth. I took them up on that option, but was so full from the noodles that I managed only a few sips of the soup before calling it quits. Yet, the little bit I tried was delicious and certainly worthy of continual consumption if I had the stomach capacity.

Of note, the ramen my buddy got was equally awesome. The noodles were cooked somewhere between medium and hard and the broth had a nice, even balance to it. By the time we both finished, we concluded that the hour wait was well worth it…at least to try the place. I’m not sure that I would wait in that same line again with Ramen Jinya just down the street, but would happily return in better line circumstances. If you don’t like the ramen at Tsujita LA, you will likely never find a ramen to suit your fancy. It may be too pretty to eat, but it’s too good not to.

It should also be noted that Tsujita LA only serves ramen at lunch, which is likely the reason for the crazy-long wait. So heads up and all that.

Sometimes nothing beats a good bowl of ramen. No, I don’t mean the Cup O Noodle that powered me through late nights in college. I mean real ramen in a real bowl, with some thick broth and some real meat. For lunch, I headed to Ramen Jinya in Studio City with some coworkers to see if their ramen could bring back my memories of drunkenly wandering the streets of Osaka for some noodles in a bowl. There are four signature pork ramen flavors, and although they were strangely out of the Hakata premium rich broth, I was already going with their Original Yokohama ramen, so luckily this didn’t affect me.

The Yokohama ramen was made with pork chashu, spinach, bamboo, green onion and flied onion. Yes, that’s right, the onion was flied and not fried. Already I was reminded of Japan and decided to order as though I was actually in Japan. This meant I didn’t order without the spinach or onion and would just eat around it. Also, I kind of figured this ramen was made in batches and such ingredients couldn’t be avoided. On top of those regular ingredients, I ordered spicy miso and garlic for my ramen.

Not long after, my ramen was on the table in front of me and looked beautiful. I pushed the spinach aside, mixed in the spicy miso, squeezed some garlic out of the press and went to work. I quickly found that the spicy miso wasn’t too spicy and had to add more spice, but it only went up from there. The broth was thick and full of salty porky flavor. The pork itself was from the belly and tasted like boiled bacon, but in a good way. But by far the best part of the ramen was the noodles themselves. These were sturdy noodles and cooked just perfectly so that they were almost the Japanese version of al dente. They were truly delicious and even more so with that great broth.

At a price of $8.55 before any add-ons, Ramen Jinya might scare off some people used to Cup O Noodle, but it is definitely worth the price of admission. Plus, who doesn’t love flied onions?

Not too long ago (at least in my head), Ajisen Ramen opened its doors at the Century City food court. I’m not sure where else this Japanese ramen chain exists in the US, but I do know it is a pretty popular and slightly upscale chain in the land of Asia. I decided to check it out to see how it held up against its Asian brethren and found that the menu was pretty similar to what I remembered from Asia. It had a variety of ramen options and some tasty-looking Japanese appetizers.

The prices were pretty on-par with the Century City food court, but a bit more than can be find at your average corner ramen shop. After looking at the menu, my decision was pretty clear: Beef Curry Ramen. But I didn’t think that would be enough (not in size, because I can never finish a bowl of ramen, but in terms of flavor variety), so I also ordered some gyoza. After about two minutes, the meal was ready and I grabbed it from the counter and brought it back to my table.

The gyoza was disappointingly small in size and number. There were only five dumplings and they were pretty tiny. It definitely didn’t seem to be worth the 3 bucks, but at least they tasted pretty good. The bowl of ramen, however, was huge. I knew that there was no way I could finish it, so I just set out to eat as much as I could. The noodles had a great consistency and the beef was pretty tasty. It had absorbed a nice curry flavor, which was strongest when drinking the broth. It didn’t bend any of the rules of ramen or try to do anything especially creative, but it was certainly what I expected and it made me happy. Better ramen can be had in the little Japanese pockets of LA, but if you have a hankering for good ramen around Century City, you really can’t go wrong with Ajisen.

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.

For too long have I been subjected to people who believe the beginning and end of Japanese food is sushi. While living in Japan for half of a year, I believe I ate sushi once. This was not because I was avoiding sushi, but because sushi just wasn’t as prevalent as we are led to believe. Sure, you can find sushi if you are looking, but it is not as though every corner has a sushi place. Rather, it is much more common to find ramen. This isn’t your Cup O Noodle college hangover ramen, but a real, hearty bowl of broth with noodles, meat and more. Recently, some coworkers of mine were heading out to “that ramen place” in Gardena for lunch and I joined them, fingers crossed that this place would be the true Japanese food I’ve been waiting for.

When we pulled into the parking lot, I knew this place had to be good. There weren’t any Fords or Chevys (no offense, Detroit) in the parking lot, but it was full of Honda, Toyota and Nissan. I looked at the sign, which read Hakata Ramen Shinsengumi and knew I was going to a good place. Inside and outside, everything was written in both English and Japanese. Waiters were yelling random words in Japanese around the place, which could have been obscenities for all that we knew, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t since so much of the clientele was actually Asian.

I took a look at the menu and pretty easily found what I wanted. This was the B-Set, which was a bowl of Hakata Ramen, gyoza dumplings and steamed rice. Rather than telling the waiter what we wanted, we had a slip of paper to write our orders on. This gave you many options on how to order your ramen. I ordered my noodles hard, my oil normal and my soup base strong. I also ordered some Spicy Miso in the soup. At the end of the options, there was a section called “Un desire able?” None of us could quite figure out what this meant, since it seemed semi-Spanish. I thought that whatever this was, I would want two, but I was wrong. Our waiter told us that this was ginger and green onions. I only got the ginger, which I suppose constitutes only half of an “un desire able.”

My ramen (pictured above), gyoza and rice arrived together and looked so awesome that a drunk man wandering the streets of Osaka at 2 am would have been proud. I dug into both and was a happy man. The gyoza was crispy on the bottom and soft on top, just as it should be. When I took a look at the ramen my friends were eating, I knew I had made the right choice by going with hard noodles. It’s kind of like getting al dente with Italian pasta, but better.

The spicy miso was a great addition to this soup, also. It came in a scoop like ice cream, but happily dissolved into the broth with a little twirl of the chopsticks. It turned the broth into a beautiful orange color and added some delicious flavor. The only real problem with this soup came after I had eaten all of the noodles and meat. When the broth was all alone, it was too salty and strong. This was mostly my fault for ordering a strong soup base, so I have learned my lesson and will get the normal soup base next time.

As a bonus for having extra broth at the end of my meal and being childlike, I discovered the art of ramen oil painting. This involved me squirting bits of oil into my soup and shaping it with my chopsticks. If you look closely, you can see the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus to the right!–>

So, yeah. This was a pretty great place to get some lunch, and cheap too! The ability to customize your ramen is a pretty sweet option that can make anyone happy. Also, they have their own YouTube page, with is pretty badass. This is Japanese food as it is meant to be and not some silly, trendy sushi restaurant with rolls stuffed with jicama.