Noodles

I found a great ramen noodle place in the middle of Kichijoji today as I was hunting for dinner in my neighborhood. It is called Tenbunkan (天文館) and both their Kyûshû-style tonkotsu miso ramen and gyôza dumplings were fantastic.

I love Japanese ramen. I’m not talking about the kind we survived on as poor college students. I’m talkin’ about the real thing. Noodle soups with carefully kept secret recipes, a variety of vegetables, and sometimes an egg or thin round cuts of meat. Unfortunately, I never found any noodles in Beijing that I liked, and I tried many of their huge variety of noodles when I was there.

In Japan, ramen noodles are a highly developed food industry, with a cult following. See the movie Tampopo for an excellent and humorous peek into the ramen world of Japan. In addition to being delicious, even the best noodle stops are quick, relatively cheap, and totally fill you up. There are of course a lot of bad noodles in Japan with a kind of standard drab taste, but there are also thousands of branded and often highly unique ramen shops all over Japan. You can buy any number of ramen guidebooks to help you explore the variety available in your city and there is always the Ramen Museum where you can taste some of the best that Japan has to offer. Tonkotsu miso, spicy miso, and regular miso styles are my favorites. I think I might have to eventually add a page here listing my favorite Tokyo ramen places.

One thought on “Noodles”

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