Tigers and Cranes

Sometimes i sit around and think about contributions of various countries around the world, specifically, when it comes to food.

Idle thoughts, to be sure, but then i am a pretty idle dude. And it goes something like this. Germans have given the world such delicacies as wienerschnitzel and the radler, the Greeks, gyros. British with their assorted disgusting meat pies, Koreans… well, you know the national dish of koreans, the fermented cabbage bomb, the kimchi. Are we forgetting anything? oh, yes, what about China?

China in my opinion, has but two contributions to the world worth a damn in my opinion(yeah, gunpowder and medicine don’t mean smack to me). And i don’t care what you think these two things may be, one is the written language (kanji, hanja, hanzi) and the other, ramen.

yes, ramen.

of course, once the japanese got their hands on it, it went under a transformation from a working man’s grub to an exalted dish in which some are prepared to wait for two hours in a line to taste its magic. I consider myself a young turk when it comes to ramen soup base, preferring miso base over the more traditional shio or shoyu (salt and soy sauce, respectively) soup. Your mileage may vary. Some do prefer shoyu over miso flavor, but then i also heard that communists like shoyu better too.

Miso Ramen. Bestest type of ramen in the world.

Undisputed mastery of miso ramen is achieved in the beautiful city of Sapporo, it originated there, after all, and the ramen masters there in Susukino district’s Ramen Yokocho also go ahead and dump a generous servings of seafood such as squid and crabs in the ramen. Oh, you haven’t read my entry on Ramen Yokocho in Sapporo? For shame! Get thee to this link!

Now you know that the Japanese take ramen making seriously. Alas, i must report that ramen making endeavors in korea falls short of what’s really considered gourmet.
I recall being in Busan, Korea for the hell of it once, and despite mean as hell taxi drivers and middle aged dudes fist fighting outside the train station, it is a pretty city.

On the other hand, being hungry, I ordered a bowl of ramen at a local fast foodery. Imagine my dismay when the ramen I ordered was from a pack of “Shin-ramyon”, complete with soup base in a shiny silvery pouch. Damn, even I can make that kind of ramen! To be fair, it tasted pretty good considering it came out of a packet, but this is not what I had in mind. One can’t complain about the price, though, at close to mere three bucks, what do you want?

Things are a bit different in Japan, though. Although most ramen joints have some great tasting stuff, I urge you to avoid “stand up and eat” stall ramen. Maybe it was just bad luck, but I had a hell of a stomach trouble for days after a bout in one of those ramen places.

In Yokohama, apparently, there exists “Shin Yokohama Raumen Amusement Park”. I haven’t personally visited, but you can bet that it’s high on my list of culturally vital locations one must visit while in Japan, maybe up there with the toilet musuem.

Shin Yokohama Ramen Museum

This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 8:26 pm and is filed under food, japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.