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Emptying our ramen notebook
I did so many interviews and so much research and ate so much soup that a bunch of fascinating/funny tidbits, thoughts and quotes ended up not making it into the piece. Here are some in no particular order.
Emptying our ramen notebook
Thank you for all the great feedback I've received so far on this week's piece on ramen on Philadelphia. It was certainly one of the most fun food articles I've written in a long time. I did so many interviews and so much research and ate so much soup that a bunch of fascinating/funny tidbits, thoughts and quotes ended up not making it into the piece. Here are some in no particular order.
- For a really great bar taken on ramen, you need to try the one that appears as an occasional special at South Philly Tap Room (1509 Mifflin St.). It just ran this past weekend. Scott Schroeder and Mark Regan (who ran point on this batch) hard-boil chickens with aromatics to emulsify their fat, then toss pork bellies and beef hearts into that liquid to poach them off. They garnish their soup (above) with a bunch of stuff, including tender slices of both meats (haven't beef heart in ramen like that) and deadly Thai bird chilies that put several ramen slurpers into hilarious temporary spice shock the night I was there. The dudes don't know when their soup — dubbed Round Guy Ramen on the menu — will be back, but have promised to keep us posted.
- "Putting together a hoagie — it seems easy, but there are places that specifically specialize in hoagies and they make it better than you can. They make it seem easy, but it's not. And soup is much more complex than a hoagie." —Ben Puchowitz of Roundeye (not Round Guy) on how "simple" foods are often not as simple as they seem
- Ramen Boy (211 N. 11th St.) goes through roughly 168 gallons of broth a week.
- "Face it: as important as the broth and noodles and taré are to ramen, it's the meat and toppings that most people focus on," writes David Chang in Momofuku. It's totally true. And how could you not get fixated looking at the add-ons they offer at Totto Ramen in Hell's Kitchen? Corn (traditional)! Sesame oil (new-school)! Wakame! Seasoned avocado! And spicy bamboo shoots, which I ordered. They were spicy as fuckkkk, if the 6,000 cartoon chili peppers next to the name didn't already tip you off.
- Speaking of toppings: I love naruto. Those are the little round pink-swirled processed fish cake things (usually made from cheap fishstick fish like pollock) that look like enemies (or maybe powerups?) from Super Mario Bros. 2. Nom Nom Ramen (20 S. 18th St.), which is supposed to open next week, is actually using naruto as part of its logo. (h/t @foodzings for the TwitPic)
- At Morimoto (723 Chestnut St.), Chris Greway cures huevos in a mixture of sake and soy sauce for 36 hours to create the awesome texture — firm outside, creamy, but not runny, yolk — for the eggs used in his tonkotsu ramen (pictured at the top of story).
- Vedge (1221 Locust St.), which opened in November 2011, had a ramen-inspired soup on its menu garnished with baby bok choy, shiitakes and menma, but I missed trying it. (It's been replaced more recently by an onion soup.) Co-owner Kate Jacoby had this to say about her husband Rich Landau's vegan food acuity when I interviewed them in December: "He has a photographic memory for food, a great way of figuring things out. Like the pho [broth] in our ramen bowl — he's never had pho and he never will. But he's getting into peoples' heads and translating it."
- The original concept for Puchowitz and partner Shawn Darragh's Roundeye (it's no longer called that, that as we know) was a Qdoba-style quick-serve that would allow customers to build their own soups. (Darragh worked in Qdoba's marketing department for several years.) That's since evolved into the full-on concept they've rocked at Matyson (37 S. 19th St.) for two pop-ups. Their third pop-up, scheduled for Sunday, April 1, will be the last at the Center City BYO, as it's planning on introducing Sunday brunch and dinner service. (The restaurant's usually closed on Sundays.) Darragh says the April 1 menu will feature a new "snacks" section, all new vegetable dishes, new juices, a cold noodle dish and some new soups — including a new-fangled ramen.
- I really liked the miso (above) and tonkotsu bowls, layered with cuts of pork collar and crisped trumpet mushrooms, Sam Ho of Zento (132 Chestnut St.) allowed Neal Santos and me to try. They should be appearing on Zento's lunch menu, along with a roast duck take on ramen, in a few weeks. (He's been waiting on paperwork for his kitchen hood since moving in January.) The Hong Kong-born chef doesn't get too wrapped up in the politics of food authenticity. "I have the ability to do 'traditional,'" says the Morimoto-trained Ho, "but why not do something different?"
- Hack College has a fun infographic on instant ramen. It features student-budget recipes, including one where you bake ramen in a 400-degree oven and another calling for fresh dandelion buds. Favorite reader comment: "Once again, let a white person get their hands [on] foreign food and they start baking it and adding dandelions to it. WTF, whitey???"
- Stephen Simons and Dave Frank have been very quiet about the Royal Izakaya & Sushi project they've working on at 782 S. Second. The partners seem very confident in chef Todd Dae Kulper's ramen-making skills (a tonkotsu style and others have been in R&D for more than a year now), but they're also going to be offering "pretty traditional izakaya fare, like you find in Japan," according to Simons. This includes karaage (fried stuff, with a batter bolder than tempura) and snacks like dried skate wing with a mayo-based dipping sauce.
- "There's a certain romance to the highway diner. We don't expect a diner in New Jersey to be like a diner in Philadelphia, let alone a diner in Pittsburgh or Wilmington. Ramen is that same kind of down-home, very ordinary level of eating. It's not the elite, but the common folks who really enjoy it. There's this romance of it being the food of the common man, the working-class hero. That's what he eats after a long night of drinking." —Frank Chance, associate director of the Center for East Asian Studies at UPenn, on ramen's populist appeal
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