Our Japanese reporter shares three excellent reasons why you should stop by this ramen joint the next time you’re in Fukuoka. No excuses!
ramen (Page 31)
A young man recently had a brush with death after his epic snacking caused his stomach to fill with so much gas that it nearly exploded.
It turns out that Tokyo’s Michelin star-winning ramen eatery has a sister restaurant, but not for long.
When a reporter for popular social news site BuzzFeed ate at Ramen Jiro recently, Japan’s netizens had plenty to say about it!
We all love candy, don’t we? But how would you feel about candy that, rather than tasting like peaches and cream, tastes like pork stock ramen soup?
20 mouth-watering reasons to check in early for your flight.
If you’ve ever worked in a customer-facing role, you know just how demanding some people can be. There are times you get talked down to, bossed around, and treated like you’re sub-human just because you’re the employee and they’re the one spending the cash.
On the flip-side, as a customer, you expect to be treated respectfully and get what you pay for. Most of the time there’s a fairly even balance—interaction between customer and employee goes smoothly, both parties are polite and respectful, and all’s well that ends well. But sometimes that balance can be upset, and things can get way out of hand. Like what happened at this ramen restaurant in Japan’s Hyogo Prefecture, when an argument turned into a three-hour sit-in that ended with local police making an arrest…
According to a program that recently ran on TV, there are more than 100,000 ramen shops across Japan, and because competition is so fierce, most are lucky to survive for even two or three years. In order to succeed in the chaotic ramen business, many shops are starting to come up with ways to offer not only a good bowl of steaming noodles and broth, but also a one-of-a-kind experience that will keep customers coming back for more.
And Ramen Jiyujin, based on theinr overwhelming number of supporters on social media, has managed to accomplish just that, with a take on ramen that is only limited by your imagination. Take a trip with our Japanese reporting team to Yokohama to see the shop for yourself!
With the slogan “Delicious ramen is in your house,” Toyo Suisan Kaisha, Ltd., the Japanese company best known for producing the Maruchan brand of ramen noodles, announced the second round of their ongoing ramen campaign on November 5, which will culminate in one lucky person winning a super stylish, one-of-a-kind, ramen donburi [porcelain bowl] chair.
As if the thought of owning your very own ramen-bowl chair wasn’t exciting enough, the campaign also comes complete with four handsome characters ready to teach you all the secrets behind cooking a perfect bowl of ramen!
Halloween is over, so we can officially talk about all the presents we want this holiday season! A gift that has always been popular is the Easy-Bake Oven, which is one of the coolest presents ever and a great way to get young ones interested in the joy of cooking.
Baking isn’t an especially big pastime in Japan since very few households have a proper oven, but this product from Mega House is the perfect way to get kids interested and involved with cooking. It probably won’t be just kids clamoring for this kitchen aid either; adults are certainly going to want this as well because it teaches us a skill every grownup gourmand will appreciate: how to make homemade ramen noodles!
Ramen, which despite its origins many now consider to be one of the national dishes of Japan, seems to have steadily grown in popularity and recognition outside the country as well, with an increasing number of ramen establishments opening in locations such as Singapore, London, New York, Los Angeles and even the Netherlands in recent years.
Now, one of the most successful ramen chains in Japan, Hakata Ippudo—often simply referred to simply as “Ippudo”—will be venturing into a brave new culinary frontier as they open their very first shop in Paris, France, this December. We can imagine it has to be pretty exciting and challenging for a foreign-based restaurant to open shop in the country that gave us the Michelin Guide, and it also looks like we can look forward to some fashionable collaborations to commemorate Ippudo’s foray into one of the gourmet capitals of the world!
Ramen lovers in Japan will have something to be excited about this Friday, October 16. Popular ramen chain Hakata Ippudo is celebrating their 30th anniversary that day and will be offering complimentary bowls of ramen at 30 select locations. That’s right, we’re talking FREE RAMEN here, and come the 16th, we know there’ll be plenty of customers waiting for their bowl of steaming pork-broth noodles!
It wasn’t so long ago that you’d hear expats and travelers in Japan express shock over the concept of sitting down in a restaurant and paying good money for a bowl of ramen. Seriously, aren’t those the cheap, instant noodles that college students, bachelors, and other people too lazy to cook survive off of?
Things are very different today, though. Ramen is currently the hottest segment of Japanese cuisine in the international dining community, with restaurants dedicated to it opening up in cities across the U.S. The humble noodles’ stock has risen so high that this ramen restaurant in Hokkaido is listed in the esteemed Michelin guide, so we decided to see if it was deserving of the honor.
We’ve seen some strange pizza toppings in the past. From Kit Kats to squid ink, Japan certainly knows how to deliver when it comes to thinking outside of the box.
Now, there are two new awesome pizzas on the menu: Ramen Noodle and Natto Okonomiyaki. And that’s not all – both items are being offered as part of a collaboration using local ingredients that hark back to the 1960s. Available from Aoki’s Pizza from September 10, this is an opportunity that’s not to be missed!
Last week, I stopped by the Cup Noodles Museum in Yokohama to try its just-released Cup Noodle Ice Cream, with its chives, shrimp, and all the other fixings of instant ramen. It was definitely an interesting experience, but I did have one complaint, which is that Cup Noodle Ice Cream doesn’t actually have any noodles in it. Technically, it should be called “Cup Noodle Topping Ice Cream.”
Thankfully, it turns out there actually is a place in Japan where you can get ice cream with ramen noodles mixed in. Since I suddenly found myself with the unlikely title of RocketNews24’s resident ramen ice cream expert, I figured it was time to go another round with this unorthodox class of dessert, and to crown a winner in this battle of the ramen ice creams.
A few days ago, we heard that Nissin, maker of Cup Noodle, was now selling ice cream topped with meat, chives, and all the other fixings that are found in instant ramen at the Cup Noodles Museum. One of my coworkers, who lives not far from the Osaka Cup Noodles Museum, bravely volunteered to try it out, and I was all set to let him be our guinea pig, since I’ve already taken one for the RocketNews24 team as far as strange desserts go.
But as it turns out, the Cup Noodle Ice Cream is available exclusively at the second Cup Noodle Museum in Yokohama. Hey, wait a second! That’s where I live!
Uh oh…
You hear a lot of news about the weird foods coming out of Japan. It’s almost as if, once a year or so at one food retailer or another, the guys in the marketing department have a meeting to determine the next delicious flavor to serve up to the masses, only for the director to suffer a minor brain aneurysm and start shouting a bunch of random gibberish about soil-flavored bananas or something.
And that, friends, is probably how we ended up with beef-topped ramen ice cream.
Earlier this month, we decided to find out just how many hard-boiled eggs you can fit into a bowl of ramen/human stomach, and found out that 10 was a doable and delicious number. But while an egg is a nice accent to a bowl of Japan’s favorite kind of noodles, the king of ramen toppings is chashu, the slice of roast pork that adds some heft and protein to the meal.
Most ramen in Japan comes with a solitary slice of chashu, but some places allow you to pile on more pork. Since we’d already gone with ten times the normal amount of toppings with eggs, we decided to raise the scale to the second power and chow down on a bowl of ramen with 100 slices of chashu.
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