Instead of reaching there via a Wardrobe route, Nagoya is about a two-hour bullet train ride from Tokyo. It is the third most populous city in Japan, with 2.3 million people living within 11 square miles. Car geeks may know Nagoya as...
My trip to Kyoto was awesome for many reasons. Temples, new friends, raw nature, or scenes like this one, just three boys feeding hawks like a flock of seagulls. Despite its rural look this is in the heart of Kyoto....
It's no secret that I have a massive man-crush on Ramenate, a ramen blog written by a guy named Nate. For the longest time I didn't know his name and thought the blog was pronounced ramen nah-tay, like French. He's one of the rare...
On Sunday, April 6, my picture and story was in the Kanagawa edition of the Yumiuri Shimbun, one of Japan's three biggest newspapers (yes only the local Kanagawa edition... but still). Read it here if you can read Japanese. If not you can look...
Japan is noodle crazy. Each station in each town of each prefecture have their own noodle specialty. Being noodle fiends ourselves, Kayoko and I researched some of the regional noodles of Niigata prefecture before setting foot there last month. As soon as we arrived, we...
Oh Ichiran. I was very anti-you for a long time because of your bizarre seating arrangement. It just seems so weird that we, the customers, have to sit at a private booth, in silence, without speaking to the chefs -- instead ordering by...
By Anna de Castro Just when I thought February in NY could not get any dreamier (and by dreamy, I mean cold, slushy, and awaiting 6-8 more inches of snow), word came that a Bay Area favorite was making its way east,...
My new neighborhood in Tokyo is called Yayoicho, just a mile west of Shinjuku, one of the biggest entertainment and nightlife spots on planet earth. It's like Times Square, only if New Yorkers hung out there all the time instead of clueless tourists and touts....
Last week a reader asked if I had tried Chibiscus. Apparently it had been compared to Tsujita -- a bold statement. I promised I'd check it out. I assumed it was the random shop that opened on Sunset Blvd earlier this year around the same...
I may have missed the recent LA Ramen Yokocho Fest due to an unavoidable trip to Ohio, but I lucked out into finding out about Mitsuwa Market's Hokkaido Festival in Torrance. It was this past weekend and the next best thing to actually being in...
When it comes to waiting for food, New York is turning into Japan. The Cronut for example, a pastry mashup of croissant + donut created at the Dominique Ansel Bakery, is apparently so good that people line up at 6am to score the precious...
This was one for the ages. Jiro is legendary. It’s spawned a slew of imitators, one of which crossed an ocean. Many think it’s an entity unto itself, like tsukemen, rather than a type of ramen. I’ve known about Jiro since the very beginning...
I went to the future the other day and found this synopsis on an IMDB page from 2018: A lonely Tokyo ramen shop proprietor secretly pines for a local bar owner and former model. His three most devoted customers, two wacky foreigners and their Japanese...
Two years ago, bored at work with nothing better to do but read through American ex-pat ramen journals, I decided to start my own ramen blog. I didn't tell anyone about it for a year because I was only using it to learn more...
I’ve written plenty about Tsujita. It is easily the best ramen shop in LA (both their hakata-style tonkotsu and tsukemen dipping ramen) and is, in my opinion, the best shop in America. But since opening in the fall of 2011 there has been...
Los Angeles to San Francisco. San Francisco to Tokyo. Tokyo to Sapporo. Plane to train to subway to foot. 33 straight hours of travel and my first meal in Japan made it all worthwhile. Welcome to すみれ (Sumire). My couch-surfing hosts...
Come out for the 2nd edition of the Ippo Ramen pop-up here at Umami Mart. Last month, the ramen sold out in record time -- 56 bowls in 56 minutes. You know what that means... get here EARLY if you want a...
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a man embarked on a quest was to eat at every ramen shop in Los Angeles. Mr. Ramen was on the list from Day One, but the man never visited. You see, Mr. Ramen has...
My first-ever visit to New York was with my sister and it flew by. It's been four years since we travelled together and she's always so much fun -- we do a lot of laughing, shopping and, of course, eating. This time was no...
We are SUPER EXCITED to host a pop-up by Ippo Ramen this First Friday 4/5. Proprietor Steve Yee will be here starting at 6pm, ready to cook up some noodles to serve you his ramen. His simple menu consists of three...
