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There is a country wide organization in Japan called the "Ramen Kyoukai," or Ramen Co-operative that many well known Ramen shops belong to and that promotes Ramen across Japan (as if it needs it.) There is another word in Japanese "Kyoukai," it means church, which I think is more appropriate for the followers of Ramen in Japan. Although Ramen is my number 2, next to soba, I've gotten to like it more and more so when I saw that the Ramen Kyoukai was coming to a neighboring park in Setagaya, I invited some ramen-loving friends and we hit the park for 4 hours. All in all we put away 7 bowls of the stuff, which was pretty good, except there were 20 ramen stands from all over the country that set up in the park.
Speaking of setup, it was pretty sweet. The back of this giant park was lined with the 20 ramen stands from Hokkaido, Tokyo, Okinawa, Kyuushuu, Nagano, all over. There were all styles, soy sauce, salt, miso, tsukemen, and tonkatsu, as well as a few hybrids. In front of the stands were tables and tents....seating for around 2000 and even that wasn't enough. The selling was
done on a ticket system, you buy a ticket and line up at your desired stall. Lines for tix were about 10 minutes long, and the lines for ramen went from as short as 5 minutes to as long as an hour for some of the more famous local names. It was rainy, really a miserable day, but an incredible amount of people turned out. I'd say at least 3000 - this is a big park. I grabed seats with my friends and we kind of paced ourselves between eating and chilling, but the most popular method of eating that day was line up, get a bowl, then get on a different line and eat while waiting.
So on to the ramen...
First one is a black soy sauce ramen. Thick noodles, with standard toppings (egg, pork belly, scallions, nori seaweed.) Noodles were a good size. Nothing stuck out too much, except the jet black soup. Soy sauce based, but had a smoky, nearly burnt flavor. Somewhere along hte line regular soy sauce was reduced hard core to produce this flavor...very mature. Very little pork in the soup, and I wouln't be surprised if it was based on just
a chicken stock/broth or japanese dashi. Really was a nice broth...not the thick, porkiness of a tonkotsu but because of the soy sauce packed a punch.
Next is shio ramen (salt broth). This is the oldest preparation, right from China. Broth is a simple salt and chicken preparation and tastes pretty much like the wonton soup in America. Small traces of oil on the top from the slices of pork. This was a dieters bowl. No egg, lean pork on top, no craziness in the soup like, well, gravy. The topping with the pink spot is actually a piece of bread. Not sure where this came into play, but it was like adding a crouton on top of soup. Not very Chinese, or Japanese, so I was surprised to see this floating on my bowl of ramen that claims to have an unaltered traditional recipe. Noodles were on the thin side, but were still chewy. The best part of this bowl was the menma (bamboo pieces). It was absolutely house-made, sour and savory at the same time. So yeah, this bowl was plain if all that really stood out were bamboo.
This third bowl was wacky. Not ramen.
It was something they were selling to promote the olympic bid in Tokyo. Yes, its beautiful, but ramen is not a beautiful food like the rest of japanese cuisine. It's messy, sloppy, with just about anything in it. Colors don't matter, only the taste of the mixed and most likely indistinguishable ingredients stewed for hours in a gigantic pot. This was a dressed up bowl of noodles with some gloppy but colorful veggies on top. End of story.
My last one was a winner. Kyuushuu tonkotsu (pork bone+pork everything soup) style, with a twist. The twist is that ballish looking thing on top, a type of miso made with sake. This bowl embodied what Japanese people like about ramen. It's messy, a little greasy (but not overwhelming like some tonkotsu I've had) You can see that the soup has taken on the nice porkyness from its ingredients. Soup was not thin, but not gravy-like, medium bodied, and carried a burnt, smoky flavor from the pork bones. Flavor was definitely more like bottom of pan burnt goodness than pork gravy. The miso was a nice touch and unmistakably added the flavor of Japanese sake, a bit sweet and an amazing
contrast to the pork soup. The heaping pile of negi on top was also a nice way to do a little palate cleansing. Pork broth is delicious and savory, but the one downside is you get tired easily with the porkiness, and need a break from time to time so you can continue to enjoy your bowl. Noodles were thin, think angel hair, kyuushuu style. I like thick better, but I was after the interesting soup (tonkotsu and miso) with this one. If you think about it, this really is the opposite of italian pasta, where thick noodles are paired with the heaviest sauce (fettuccine alfredo) and the angel hair is saved for lighter, oil based sauces. Anyway, I had a good time with this one, nice way to finish the night.
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mom
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ramen
ok, so it escapes me how they eat all of these carbs and greasy stuff and still remain stick thin. I will have to chose carefully, not as adventerous as my son. xo