meemalee

Ramen egg in situ People complain that it's hard to get around in Japan because you're literally lost in translation. This isn't true for a number of reasons which I won't go into now, but especially when it comes to food. Most restaurants, even the high-end ones, have amazing plastic models in their windows called " sampuru " which show you pretty much exactly what you're going to get; when you get inside, the menus often contain pictures; and a lot of more casual places make you order in advance from a machine which has photos of all the dishes (it's a bit like buying a car park ticket, but what you get in return is a hell of a lot more fun). Choosing noodle options in Osaka I loved using these machines because you could easily build up the craziest order possible without any confusion - press this button for extra noodles, that button for tempura on the side - but my favourite button was the one which got you a ramen egg. A r...

Ramen Burgers Hot on the heels of the food trend known as the  cronut comes the Ramen Burger . Made popular by Keizo Shimamoto, writer of the blog Go Ramen! and now ramen chef in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, this culinary mash-up is a sister to MOS Burger's famous rice burger , this time using ramen noodles as the unlikely burger receptacle - ie the ramen is the burger bun. And like MOS Burger, its roots come from Japan - unsurprising as Shimamoto, a second-generation American Japanese-American, ditched his career in finance to study the art of ramen in Tokyo itself. Looks good, huh? The  Japanese forerunner  to the ramen burger is more traditional - all the usual elements are there, including cha shu pork, naruto fishcake, menma bamboo shoots, spring onions - portable ramen - whereas the American Ramen Burger is a proud fusion, much like Shimamoto himself. The most famous of the old-school ramen burgers comes from  Furusato-tei  in Kitakata Cit...