alt Hacker NewsI have never yet been to Japan, but whenever I visit a big city, I try a ramen shop. To be honest, so far it has been a let down. IDK, I guess maybe I'm expecting too much from a bowl of soup, with noodles and condiments. As a form factor, it's genius. But for the price that it is usually sold at in western cities, it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I feel like it has been a bit too overhyped for what it is.
BTW, you can also replicate the form factor using western cooking ingredients/traditions and it still works pretty well.
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San Francisco is an example of a place with higher than average Japanese population where you have a chance of getting some really good authentic stuff. I recently ate at a place that caught my eye with chicken katsu curry, and that meal teleported me back to Japan.
You can buy really good Ramen ingredients online and make your own. If you are not a vegetarian and don’t mind eating pork, you can buy sealed packets containing about 2 or 3 fluid ounces of thick pork bone broth, reduced to a thick liquid. I like a lot of veggies, and buy good noodles.
My wife, who I have been married to most of my long life, has never liked vegetables. I make Ramen and she eats her veggies as if they weren’t even in the Ramen. Just a little life hack I thought I would share, it might work with kids also.
I've been to Japan - the first cheap buy-and-nuke-at-home ramen from the konbini around the corner I ate there completely blew me away (†)! It was decisively better than what I would realistically expect to get in a restaurant in the west. I don't know how they do it, but I learned never to underestimate the Japanese people’s dedication to their craft.
(†) For the curious, it was chāshū ramen.
Edit: To avoid confusion, I do not mean instant ramen, but a plastic bowl of chilled, pre-prepared take away ramen soup.
For most foreign dishes you can't just compare the total price to local food. I'm saying that having ordered pizza in Japan, and an actually good one with Buffala for instance will be twice to three times the price you'd pay in Italy.
Ramen chains managed by Japanese people are decently good when I tried them in France (Ippudo for instance), it's not that far from what's served in Japan. It costs 1.5x to 2x more, and the default orders will be slightly adapted to the locals (harder noodles and lower grease by default) but that's par for the course.
> BTW, you can also replicate the form factor using western cooking ingredients/traditions and it still works pretty well.
The toughest part is the sheer amount of time to prepare the soup and dexterity to get good noodles. Spending 8h on the soup with all the ingredients, and repeat I don't know how many times to get to a decent balance is a dedication I don't think I'll ever have to be honest.
Ramen is a great soup. But I haven't been blown away in any shop not even Japan. EXCEPT that random place in Kyoto we went into without plan. I think it's even a franchise. Not an ancient shop with 100 year tradition or something:
https://salmonnoodlekyoto.com/
I got the "Salmon Dandan Noodles". Good lord that broth. No idea what was in there. It wasn't clear; rather slightly thick and creamy. And the salmon was so tender. I don't even like pork but I also ate that without thinking. Man I still miss that dish.
That's why you should try it in Japan.
It's almost like people have different taste in food!
It's also kind of a wild take "I have nearly zero experience in <thing from other culture> and I don't understand why people from that culture enjoy it"
Re price and prep
First, it's quite difficult to make. Try it, lol.. but by your admission you haven't had anything decent.
Second - in Japan, Ramen is mostly pretty cheap, a lot of places have a vending machine where you pay for a bowl and get a ticket with an order number. It's really not a fancy or pricey experience unless you're somewhere upmarket.
> But for the price that it is usually sold at in western cities
What are those prices specifically? In Barcelona (one of those western cities, imo) at a good ramen place, you get Gyozas for ~5 EUR, and a nice ramen for ~12-14 EUR, add a drink and you end up with ~20 EUR per person, which strikes me as relatively affordable for eating out, but maybe the metropolitan prices have biased me over time. Is this expensive/cheap compared to the other cities you've tried ramen in?
> BTW, you can also replicate the form factor using western cooking ingredients/traditions and it still works pretty well.
Isn't that just a stew at that point? How is it still ramen if you switch out all the ingredients and the broth that makes ramen ramen?
I had a lousy burger in Japan.
I don't think this is unique to Ramen at all. Burgers should not cost $20-30 for some limp smooshed beef, a burrito should also not be $15-20, and tacos should sure as hell not be $3-5 per tiny taco. It's all bullshit; none of that food is worth that money. But... I suspect it costs that much because people pay that much, and because the cost of every other aspect of service puts pressure on the restaurants to try to push the ceiling of what it's worth.
As a ramen lover, I try to take advantage of value oriented cheaper pricing when it's available.
As a relatively tall active man, I need to pregame restaurants with something more cost effective, and even still need to order 1.5 to 2x what everyone else does in order to feel satiated. (~82kg, 192cm)
At least ramen takes some time to eat. When I go into a standard burger place nowadays, it takes me literally 20 seconds sometimes to finish a $20+ burger, and then I'm just sitting there waiting for people to delicately nibble their way through what is a deeply overrated culinary experience, in many cases. Like c'mon, give me some damn food, I'll go get it myself.
Tried many ramen places in Europe and only two were close to good ramen in Japan. Kodawari in Paris and totemo ramen in Stockholm.
That’s true in my experience, but Ramen in Japan is actually considerably better. The only good Ramen I ever had in Europe was in Düsseldorf but the owner imports pork from Japan.