Curious why ramen is so rare and yet sushi joints are on every corner?

[kdl]

With all the fervor for the new YumeWoKatare, I wonder why really good authentic ramen is not something more chefs are keen to make here in Boston? I've been to Ippudo and Totto in NYC and on every night of the week the lines start forming 1/2 hour before they open for dinner and don't let up all night.

Just curious whether anyone has any theories/thoughts. And quite frankly, I just like to talk about ramen! Ha. (Anyone here had ramen in Japan? My favorite place was chain called Kamakura.)

[enhF94]

slurping isn't date-friendly for many people. Chowhounds and ramen enthusiasts excluded, natch.

[Spike]

Profit margins.

and FYI, most "Sushi" places in the Boston area are owned by Chinese, and are staffed by Chinese (Mandarin speaking) sushi chefs. They figured out that it's just more profitable than trying to open up yet another "cheap chinese food" restaurant...

Oiishi and Oga and that little place in the basement in Coolidge Corner are notable exceptions.

[yumyum]

Add Toraya in Arlington to the list. One of my favorites. Sad I can't get over there for a bento at lunch anymore.

[MC Slim JB]

And Sushi Island, and Inaho, I believe.

http://mcslimjb.blogspot.com/

[justbeingpolite]

Cafe Sushi in Cambridge is also Japanese owned and run, I believe.

[Klunco]

After eating fresh-made soba noodles at Ippaku in Berkeley a couple months ago, I'm longing for a soba noodle place. At least we have a couple of Ramen options in Boston (Pikachu @ Super 88, Sapporo at Porter, and now YumeWoKarate.) I can relate to your disappointment of the overall pigeon-holing of Japanese cuisine to sushi, but it's simply what happens to ethnic foods. Look at Italian-American (Red sauce, chicken parm), American-Chinese food, Indian (Tikka Masala), Thai (Pad Thai). People's tastes tend to graviate towards foods that appeal to their palate while seeming exotic or different. I think for many people, the saltyness, fatty pork, and even ignorance toward ramen being something other than "cup-o-ramen" is what prohibits it from being more popular.

The one cuisine that I'm really surprised hasn't exploded in America is Korean food. While a lot of it can be challenging for the American palate, sweet barbarqued meats should fit right in in America.

[TimTamGirl]

Is Pikachu any good?

[Klunco]

I am, by no means, a ramen expert. My only comparisons are Momofuku in New York, some place recently in San Fran and Sapporo in Porter. In comparison I would give it a slight edge over Sapporo and it's a couple bucks cheaper. It's a solid bowl of ramen even if it's not superlative. The staff is super friendly as well.

Mind you, Boston isn't currently a ramen town and it's not going to blow your mind but I would say it is worth a visit for solid, cheap ramen. I had the spicy miso and the broth had a nice richness and good heat to it but perhaps could've had more depth of flavor. Pork was fine, noodles had the appropriate snap, egg was fine. My only real complaint is that it was overly salty, even for an expected salty food like ramen.

[Allstonian]

It's Pikaichi. (Pikachu is a Pokemon character.)

It's not as good as Ken's was, but it's perfectly decent ramen. I will second Klunco's comment that the staff is very friendly and cheerful.

[Klunco]

Haha, thanks for correction Allstonian. Hopefully it's easier for TimTam to find ramen searching for Pikaichi on the web than Pikachu.

[TimTamGirl]

Hee! That makes more sense - though I had a mental image of a sign with Pikachu gobbling a massive bowl of noodles, and it was pretty cute.

[barleywino]

my main complaint about the ramen around here is that the pork is usually these stingy thin dried-out pieces of pork, like cardboard, not the glorious pieces of fatty succulent pork one gets at other places

[MC Slim JB]

When I was standing in line on the sidewalk the other night, some guy walked by, saw the number of Japanese and Japanese-Americans in the line (90%, I'd guess), and asked, "Can the sushi be that good?"

I was tempted to correct him, but i suspected he was asking rhetorically, just being a mocking d-bag. I imagine he's like a lot of Americans: sushi is the only Japanese cuisine he knows, and he probably doesn't care for it, maybe hasn't even tried it.

http://mcslimjb.blogspot.com/

[lergnom]

I lived for a little while in Italy when I was a kid. I was stunned to discover that what we thought of as Italian food wasn't, that pasta was essentially an appetizer or side dish, that most places didn't make spaghetti and it didn't come covered in sauce. Then we learned American Italian food was southern Italian and we were in the north but when we went south we discovered the food wasn't at all like American red sauce. People thought Italian food was spaghetti and pizza but much of Italy didn't serve pizza then. As I remember, there was 1 place in our town of Forte - Cervo Bianco (white stag) - that made pizza.

Japanese food is like that now.

Greek food isn't much better off, reduced to moussaka and maybe pastitsio and lamb chops and gyros.

[grant.cook]

Its no different where the last place I worked - people would say "Lets eat ethnic - Italian or Chinese?"

[cambridgedoctpr]

at a certain age and weight, everyone wonders how many carbos they should be taking in. I never have a problem thinking that i should be eating less sashimi.

[pouch19]

Because ramen is everyday food in Japan, while sushi is special. Don't get me wrong, you can get sushi in any Japanese supermarket these days but it wasn't always that way. Just look at how many of the top restaurants and top chefs in Japan are sushi-related. So once eating raw fish was seen as acceptable here, it makes sense that Japanese restaurants would try to serve it. Add in the profit margin and the other Asians cashing in on sushi's popularity (most sushi in this country is made by non-Japanese) and you have a sushi boom. One more point is that technically, ramen isn't Japanese food.

[devilham]

Ok, I'll bite, what is it's origin?

[silent129]

China

[twyst]

First cooked in japan, but by chinese cooks is what Ive heard.

[devilham]

Cool, thanks for the replies silent129 and twyst

[pouch19]

Interesting read:

http://www.ramenate.com/2009/11/shiny...

[tatsu]

And now Ramen is gaining traction in China, so full circle. Chinese-style soup noodles are not uncommon in Japan. Surely most places that serve this are not the "original" la mien that landed in Japan in the early 1900's but whatever is contemporary in China now, I imagine. Food sort of diverges, feeds back into itself over time, kind of like parallel species that separate and then come back into contact. You just never know what it really came from. We look at dogs and say that is a pure-breed or that is a mutt, but it's a construct not really reflective of the reality that distinctiveness is just in the eye or palate of beholders.

[trufflehound]

There was a ramen chain with a few locations here in Boston/Cambridge back in the 80's. Anyone remember the name? Or why they didn't make it?
Pho certainly has a following.

[Chicken with a Capon]

Was it Goemon? I remember a location at One Kendall and one downstairs from Tatsukichi, perhaps one more?

[Allstonian]

You're probably correct - here's a thread about Goemon from last year:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/798603

[digga]

I was addicted to Goemon back in the 90s. I frequented the one on the BU campus quite often. I, too, would love to hear about what happened.

I've often wondered over the years if I should open a noodle soup shop in Boston. Many other major US cities have a plethora of them while we have a dearth.

How's Mentei doing these days (I think like them more than others on this board)?

[trufflehound]

Yes

[Boston_Otter]

Over the past 20-30 years or so, sushi has become the iconic Japanese food in America, and still has an air of sophistication and culture to it, even when it's easily found at Trader Joe's or Shaws.... whereas 'ramen' still reminds everyone of the .25-cent noodles they ate in college. Some folks might still balk at raw fish, but a lot more tend to roll their eyes at paying $10 for ramen before they've had the real stuff.

[Bob Dobalina]

$10...for soup....?
It'll never happen. ;)

[twyst]

Im sure they will begin to pop up very soon. IMHO Ramen shops are going to be the new "thing" all over the US in the next few years. The ones in NYC are always crazy busy, as are the ones Ive seen in california. A ramen shop just opened here in austin and people are lining up over an hour before the place opens!

[kdl]

I hope you're right! It's got to be catching on.

[FinnFPM]

Ramen will catch on. It'll then take the same path that most other "ethnic" foods, including sushi restaurants, do: they average place will just not be that good.

[lergnom]

I'm more bummed by the extremely limited menus in Japanese food. I see basics repeated from place to place. And most of them seem executed as an afterthought because they expect to sell mostly sushi and sashimi.

Here's a contrast. Over 30 years, I used to eat at a Japanese restaurant in an industrial suburb of Detroit. The restaurant was set up for the Japanese auto executives visiting and working in the area. I've never seen food like this in Boston. Yes, a few places do creative Japanese food or Japanese-inspired food but this was 30 years ago and the food was traditional. I would order whatever the specials were. I still remember one bento as a top 5 lunch ever: a lightly fried - really lightly fried - oblong of fishy paste that was like a fish jelly in a crust; a piece of fish with bones sticking out like sculpture, charred on one side and raw on the other and so on. It cost under $10. I'm not complaining about Boston. It seems that all over this country, with only a few exceptions, sushi and sashimi have overwhelmed the very deep reality of Japanese cuisine.

[kdl]

"It seems that all over this country, with only a few exceptions, sushi and sashimi have overwhelmed the very deep reality of Japanese cuisine."

This is a very good way of stating it.

[kdl]

And your comment on the repeated basics on menus reminds me of "Chinese restaurants" that for years seem to have the same template -- chicken fingers, pu pu platter, boneless ribs, duck sauce, etc. I guess that's what has happened with "Japanese restaurants" to some extent.

[passing thru]

totally agree. I always wonder too why the izakaya hasn't really caught on in any sort of bigger way in the states. this seems like a great exploitable niche for Japanese restaurants to me--a good range of beers and some interesting bar food with a casual atmosphere. but cookie cutter sushi joints with the same set of options seem to be mostly what opens...

[silent129]

Pure speculation on my part. Perhaps its due to the profit margin? It seems easier to charge a lot of money for sushi and sake rather than a bowl of noodles. Along those lines, I long for the specialist beef noodle shops of Taiwan but I doubt that will ever make it here...

[Chowrin]

I think it's volume business versus "specialty".
somehow vietnamese pull it off.
I think americans stigmatize ramen, and they don't stigmatize pho.

[kdl]

And on that note... Every time a hear about a new Japanese restaurant opening, I get a glimmer of hope that they'll serve something like sukiyaki or yakitori -- but, nope, 99.9% of the time here Japanese restaurant equals sushi with the obligatory chicken teriyaki for non-sushi eaters.

[Bob Dobalina]

There is Yakitori Zai, now in the South End. Has gotten generally good reviews on chow, although pricey.

[kdl]

True. I'm glad someone is doing real yakitori here.

[pouch19]

Ugh what a disaster that place is