Blog » Ramen

I eat a lot of instant ramen. I've cut down a lot – I used to eat it once a week, living in NYC in my 20s on a non-profit museum paycheck. But even now, as I begin my 40s, I'd say I make myself a bowl...

I am a junkie - a noodle junkie. It is my favorite food and carb of choice. I could probably give up bread, and maybe even rice, but never noodles. This month, I took over for Yoko for our monthly club Sake Gumi, and decided on the theme of Sake...

One of the best parts of being in Sake Gumi is attending our Sake Gumi Social events. We host tastings, dinners, and tours centering around sake education and drinking. To tie in with the past couple months of Sake Gumi (last month, the theme...

In Japan, they call any big, nationwide trend a boom (ブーム). For example, right now cilantro is all the rage in Japan. I'm serious - cilantro on EVERYTHING. So you could say there's a cilantro boom in full force in Japan. It's taken a long while for the ramen boom...

A list of the latest and upcoming Bay Area Japanese restaurants, including new ramen in Burlingame, sushi + omakase in San Francisco, and shochu in Oakland.

How to make your instant ramen taste better, the benefits of psychedelic mushrooms, psychedelic honey hunters, rock climbing to find medicinal herbs, more.

Tampopo is restored and is in theaters, Ichiran opens in Brooklyn with its "flavor concentration booths," the beauty of a Japanese highball, and more.

Living in Japan, I'm not used to spending a lot of money for ramen. But while in NY, I shelled out $20 for a bowl of ramen and I would do it all over again.

Welcome to our new column, Bay Eats Japan, where we'll alert you to newly and soon-to-be opened Japanese restaurants and bars in the Bay Area.

Food news and videos from the internet: David Bowie's 1980 sake commercial, prison ramen, Asian Snack Food Smackdown, and how the tech boom affects dining.

The gyoza machine from Japan is a solid steel uni-tasker that produces at least 10 gyozas per minute – up to 750 pieces per hour!!!

The best bowl of ramen we ate on our last trip to Japan was in the Chofu neighborhood of Tokyo. We were on our way for some R+R at an onsen nearby and stopped by Take-chan, which specializes in broth made...

We've all been patiently waiting for Itani Ramen to open its doors. The time has come... THIS WEEKEND! Kyle Itani, co-owner of Hopscotch restaurant, has been working on this project for years -- we even went to his Ramen Nights at Hopscotch,...

Top 3 ramen shops in the Bay Area. Ramen is a touchy subject in the Bay Area. Scratch that, it is a touchy subject ANYWHERE.

We ate Noraneko, a ramen spot in Portland conceived by the same geniuses behind Biwa. The broth was deep and the noodles no-nonsense springy. Read more...

The Lexus of ramen noodle machines used at Ramen Shop in Rockridge, Oakland.

Growing up, I would visit Japan about once every two years or so. It would always be to see our extended family, who all lived in the Tokyo area....

Sometime last week, Dave Chang of Momofuku fame declared ramen dead (in the States). You can read his diatribe in its entirety over at Lucky Peach, but he makes several ludicrous claims there, including, "Access to instantaneous information from the Internet has...

Fall has arrived in Tokyo and with it an indefatigable sense of nostalgia, or natsukashisa. My time in this country might be coming to a close (maybe not... I'm working on it) and some blasts from the past have re-entered and re-exited my life like...

Menya Musashi's namesake is one Miyamoto Musashi, regarded as one of Japan's greatest swordsmen and creator of the two-handed swordfighting technique niten-ryu, which translates to "Tarantino Wet Dream." According to legend he never lost a duel in over 50 years as a wandering warrior --...