On a trip to Japan, one “Japanese” food I would recommend is ramen. Going to a ramen shop can be filling, delicious, and a great chance to meet and talk to locals. If you pick the right place to eat your ramen, your palate, your sense of adventure, and desire to see everyday life in Japan can be satisfied.
There are a lot of great ramen shops with such interesting dishes as tomato ramen and kim-chee ramen among others. If you eat pork, tonkotsu ramen (the soup, if made correctly is whitish and made from hours and hours of boiling pork bones, spices, garlic, and other good stuff) is what I recommend.
If you don’t eat pork, I would recommend doing a lot of research before trying to get some ramen made without the use of any pork.
This list, gleaned from Japanese internet bulletin boards should help you decide if the ramen shop you’ve entered was a good one or not.
Here’s a little checklist for you:
1. Dirty water glasses
2. Noodles are too soft (usually means they boiled them too long)… the Japanese to use here to complain is “Men ga nobiteiru!” (men=noodles)
3. The soup is not hot.
4. The rag on the table is dirty and wet. (this means they didn’t give you a new one after the last customer left… by the way, this rag is not for wiping your mouth)
5. The floor is wet and slippery.
6. A customer who came after you is served before you (not only rude, but bad form and a sign of inefficiency)
7. The Ra-yu bottle is slippery or sticky. (The accepted English for Ra-yu seems to be Chili Oil, but it’s not really that spicy and often used in ramen shops in Japan as a dip for the gyoza (also known as dumplings or potstickers).
8. The pork slices on it are dried out or tough.
9. The chairs are unsteady.
10. There are cracks in the glasses.
Another school of thought, however could argue that this is exactly the kind of ramen shop one should experience… although I think if you are only in Japan for a limited time, you should eat something nice. If you are in Japan for more than a few months, by all means get gritty.
One more bit of advice… it’s OK to slurp if you want to eat it hot while the noodles are still a little al dente and before they are “nobiteiru” as mentioned above in number 2… but please don’t let people bully you into slurping. You deserve to enjoy it your way!
Any more ramen advice or stories, please feel free to comment!