One of the things Hong Kong is known for is its various roasted meats — goose in particular. I checked out a couple of goose joints that happen to have a Michelin star. Yeah, they take their goose pretty seriously here.
It’s kind of insane how much variety you can get with something as seemingly straightforward as noodles in soup. I just came from Japan, where I ate a ridiculous amount of ramen (a ridiculous amount. I wrote about nine of the bowls I ate on this blog, and there were many more bowls I ate that I didn’t bother posting about. I’m a fan of ramen, in case you couldn’t tell).
One of the many (many many) things I love about ramen is how much variety you get from bowl to bowl. There are so many different styles and types and varieties of ramen that what seems like it should be a simple dish (it’s just noodles and soup) has so much to offer.
I didn’t think it was possible, but I may have found a bowl of ramen that’s too rich. Because I just went to a local chain called Tenkaippin that specializes in an incredibly hearty chicken-based soup, and yowza.
After eating several bowls of ramen in Japan — most of them amazing — I wasn’t sure I could still have my mind blown by the dish.
Well, clearly I couldn’t have been more wrong, because I just went to Gogyo Ramen, and my mind? Blown to smithereens.
The bus going from the Jigokudani Monkey Park to Nagano station isn’t super frequent, so after getting my fill of monkey business, I had a little bit of time to kill.
Enter: Enza Cafe, a small restaurant that specializes in ramen near the beginning of the monkey trail.
Remember when I mentioned that the eel at Hashimoto was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten? Well, I’ve got another dish to add to that list.
Tokyo is a magical place.
I love ramen, but apparently the ramen back home is garbage, because the bowl I had at Hayashi in the Shibuya district of Toyko was life-changing. It’s almost implausible how good it was. Like, did that really happen? Did I dream it?
I had a hell of a time getting from Narita airport to my Airbnb in Tokyo. I’m not sure exactly where I went wrong — I had the stops for each of my transfers written down, and it all seemed straightforward enough. But somehow it went horribly awry, and I found myself staring at the almost comically complex criss-crossing lines of the Tokyo metro, wondering where I even was, or where I needed to go.
One of the specialties in Busan is a soup called dwaeji gukbap — pork and rice soup. There’s a whole stretch of road in the Seomyeon area of town that features nothing but one restaurant after another that specializes in the dish, so yeah, it’s a big deal here.