The writer went around Tokyo trying various ramen, with an American ramen blogger as a guide!
It is really interesting to see that there are so many non-Japanese raman fans like me. And they are passionate enough to blog about them too. Some of those featured in the article are Ramenate!, Ramenadventures and Ramentokyo.com.
The article featured Ivan Ramen, a ramen shop in suburban Tokyo setup by an American chef that I wanted to try for a long time. He puts it perfectly that -
"A good bowl of ramen is balanced perfectly: the soup, the noodles, the toppings, everything works together. So when you’re eating it, even though it’s all these disparate ingredients together, somehow they feel as if you’re eating one thing.”
Glad that I am aware of and have tried most of the ramen shops mentioned in the article, e.g. Nagi, Ikaruga, Mutekiya, Keisuke, Jiro, etc. Out of all these I personally prefer Ikaruga (I've yet to write about it though...), exactly because of the reason stated in the article that it is a very well-balanced bowl.
I received a link a while ago about a organisation in New York organising a ramen exploration trip to Tokyo.
The date of the trip was just shortly after the earthquake so I guess it has been cancelled unfortunately. But this reveals the niche popularity of ramen in the US. Amazing cultural power of food.
Not sure if there are such demand of a ramen tour from Singapore...
Maybe the new survey on my blog will find out?
Happy Good Friday!
