Ramen

Ramen is quite simply Japan's premiere fast food.  Ramen is something of an obsession in Japan.  Yearly guides to the best ramen-ya are published in all of Japan’s major regions.  Famous ramen-ya are promoted in tourist brochures right next to cultural and historic landmarks.  Outside these local landmarks, crowds gather at lunch and dinnertime, willing to line up and wait regardless of the weather, sometimes for as long as an hour.  Ramen stadiums, featuring five to ten ramen-ya from all over the country, are a common feature on the upper floors of department stores.

The basic dish is noodles in soup, with condiments like grilled pork, bean sprouts, leek, and bamboo shoots - but the variety of flavors found in this simple dish are endless.  Many restaurants, izakayas, karaoke halls, and amusement parks serve ramen, but the best ramen is found in speciality ramen-ya.  These are usually small, with 10 to 20 seats at a bar, and three or four tables that can sit up to four at a time.  Their menus are sparse, consisting of ramen, fried rice (chahan, yakimeshi), Chinese dumplings (gyoza), and beer.  Ramen-ya are casual places, where you can sit down, order, eat, and leave within a span of fifteen to twenty minutes, and for under 1000 yen.

Generally speaking, there are two styles of ramen-ya, the diner style and the boutique style.  Diner stryle ramen-ya tend to have plastic or formica tables, metal diner-stools, or folding chairs.  They are brightly lit, and marginally decorated.  These places are often quite old.  Diner-style ramen-ya tend to be cheap, around 400 to 600 yen, and have fairly small menus.  Boutique style ramen-ya are newer and nicer.  They have a theme for their decor – natural wood seems popular now – and atmospheric lighting.  They often have a variety of menu options, prices in the 700 to 1200 yen range.  A key point to remember is that the quality of the soup has nothing to do with the price of the ramen.  Soup is very, very cheap to make in large quantities, and its quality is entirely dependent upon the skill of its maker.  The same can be said for the noodles.  However, good toppings, and in particular good chashu, cost money.  The higher cost of the boutique ramen-ya is usually reflected in a greater quantity of toppings and a higher quality of those toppings.

Many ramen-ya have a ticket vending machine near the front door.  To order, buy a ticket, and then hand it to your server once you sit down.  The buttons are always in Japanese, but if you can read hiragana and katakana you should be able to figure out what is for sale.  If you have to guess, consider these guidelines.  The upper rows are the different kinds of ramen for sale.  The rows (across) are often sorted by soup-type, and the columns (down) by topping-type.  Simpler, cheaper items are on the left, and the more elaborate and expensive ones are on the right.  Anything that costs less than 400 yen will be either an additional topping, a side dish, or a drink.
    
Ramen is eaten with chopsticks and a Chinese-style spoon.  Use the chopsticks to pick up noodles and toppings, and the spoon to drink the soup.  If no spoon is provided, then simply pick up the bowl and drink from it.  The Japanese slurp their noodles quite loudly.  It is something of a challenge to eat ramen with chopsticks and not slurp at least a little.  After eating all the noodles and condiments, feel free to drink the remaining soup from the bowl.  

Ramen was originally a Chinese dish, but since being adopted by the Japanese it has developed into a variety of uniquely Japanese styles.  Different regions of Japan have their own special ramen style, usually based on a unique soup type.  The main types of soup are:

Shoyu - A dark, relatively clear soup that gets is color from soy sauce.  Shoyu soups are often made from fish stock, and sometimes resemble the soup served with soba and udon.  The flavor can range from strongly fishy, to mild and salty, to slightly sweet and tangy.  Shoyu ramen is the main style in the Tokyo area.  The ramen served in non-specialty restaurants is usually a shoyu-type ramen.

Shio - A thin, light soup that often has a slightly salty flavor.  This is often made with pork, but not so much as to make it thick or cloudy.  Shio ramen usually relies much more on the flavor of the condiments as the soup itself is thinner than the other types.  Tanmen, a kind of ramen featuring stir-fried vegetables, is often served with a shio-style soup.  Hakodate, a city on the northern island of Hokkaido, is known for its shio ramen.

Miso - A cloudy, salty, and strong soup that derives much of its flavor from miso, a kind of fermented soy-paste.  It is hard to describe the average miso ramen, because the flavor varies dramatically depending both on what kind of miso is used, and on the kind of stock into which the miso is put.  Miso ramen is often served with a heavy dose of vegetables.  Sapporo, on the northern island of Hokkaido, is famous for its miso ramen.

Tonkotsu - A thick, cloudy soup made with a heavy dose of pork.  The color can range from pale white to dark brown, according to what exactly is used to make the soup.  Depending on the region and the shop, fish, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, or chicken can be added to make different kinds of tonkotsu.  For this reason, tonkotsu often has the richest flavor, but it is also usually the heaviest.  One style of tonkotsu soup makes liberal use of pork fat - it is served with little puffy bits of fat floating on top.  Fukuoka is famous for its Hakata-Ramen, a pale tonkotsu ramen served with thin egg noodles.

There are two main types of noodles used for ramen, yellow egg noodles, and white flour noodles.  In the past, yellow egg noodles were the most common – these are the type found in most dried ramen packages.  Recently, the flour noodles have been gaining in popularity.  The two types differ in size and texture.  Egg noodles are fairly thin, firm to the palate, and slightly curly.  Flour noodles are soft and wide.

Many toppings are served along with the noodles and soup.  Some common ones include:

Cabbage - Either chopped into large pieces and stir-fried along with the bean sprouts, or shredded and thrown into the soup just prior to serving.  Tanmen features stir-fried cabbage and bean sprouts, usually in a thin shio-style soup.  Cabbage is also very common in Miso-Ramen.

Chashu - Slices of grilled pork.  Chashu is ramen’s luxury topping.  The most expensive item at most ramen-ya is the Chashu-Ramen, featuring four or five slices of pork.  The best chashu is grilled and flavored separately from the soup, and served in thick slices, but it seems every ramen-ya has a different way of preparing it. 

Corn - Boiled separately, and added just prior to serving.  Bataa-kon-Ramen (Butter Corn) is common in Sapporo-style ramen-ya.

Menma - Soft, brown, bamboo shoots.  These are one of the most common ramen toppings.

Moyashi - Bean sprouts.  These can either be stir fried beforehand, or blanched in boiling water.  Sometimes they are piled into a little mountain atop the bowl – many ramen-ya do this for their Miso-Ramen, while others offer a special Moyashi-Ramen featuring extra bean sprouts.

Naruto - A white fish cake, usually featuring a red spiral pattern on the inside.  It is served in thin slices.  Most ramen bowls have at least one slice of naruto.

Negi - Japanese leek, usually cut very fine.  Sometimes they are served raw, and sometimes they are fried.  Some ramen-ya offer a Negi-Ramen, featuring an extra helping of fried negi on top.

Nori - Squares of dried seaweed, put into the soup just before serving.  When dry, they are light and crispy, but they get soggy very quickly in the soup.  Most bowls of ramen have one piece of nori, but many ramen-ya offer Nori-Ramen, featuring four or more pieces of nori.

Tamago - Hard boiled egg.