Spaghetti vs Ramen...

Day 171:

 I went back to Hashiya while waiting for my laundry to finish to try their popular meat-sauce spaghetti. It was good, but again the noodles just sucked. I love Italian food and pasta, but...

I still love ramen that much more.

I love my job.

Three a day...

Day 170:

Sometimes I feel like eating ramen all day long. Okay wait, I'm lying. MOST of the time I feel like eating ramen all day long. Today just happened to be one of those days. When I woke up, I headed straight to my moms favorite Chinese restaurant to slurp their Gomoku Tanmen.

Then met up with some friends in Shinjuku and somehow got coaxed into eating this insanely overrated and expensive parfait. To put it in perspective, it was like throwing three bowls of ramen down the drain.

To cleanse myself of that madness I headed out to my best friends favorite joint--Bankara.

Kotteri Shoyu Ramen, just how I like it.

This ramen was awesome. I have just one word of advice though. Don't eat this ramen immediately after eating a fru fru parfait. Your stomach will hate you.

But it'll forgive you once you down a bowl of this...

I probably would have done four if the day didn't have to end.

A visit to Bassanova...

The average visit to Bassanova goes something like this.

Check out the pics on the wall to help decide what you want.

Place your order from the ticket vending machine.

And enjoy!

Then just chill...

If you were wondering, we are now open 7 days a week from 6pm~3am (Last Order 2:30am). Feel free to come and say hi!

Sanma Ramen...

Day 169:

Last night, I received an email from Brian inviting me to meet an unnamed person from an unnamed company with an unnamed job to interview us along with Nate for an unnamed purpose. I know you're gonna hate me for this, but that's all I can reveal at this time. In any case, we all met up in Ikebukuro at Soushinmenan Kissui to try their popular Sanma (Pike fish) Ramen.

Hmm...the soup tasted exactly like I was eating shio-yaki Sanma. Although it was an unfamiliar flavor for ramen, the soup had a nice balance. But beware! If you don't like Pike fish, you will definitely not like this ramen because the aroma straight up hits you in the face.

The egg is supposedly marinated in red wine, but any evidence of this was masked by the overpowering sanma.

The noodles are from Mikawaya Seimen and really matched well with the soup. I'm pretty sure I've sampled these exact same noodles before.

Neko Ramen was too busy being jealous to even comment on this great ramen.

Please stay tuned...

Meow...

Day 168:

Neko Ramen is back! You may or may not recall his appearance in several posts from last year's journey when he followed me all the way from Hokkaido to Kyushu. I first had the idea of using Neko Ramen as a mascot for my blog, but then backtracked against it since I thought I'd eventually get sued or something.


BUT with the upcoming June release of Kenji Sonishi's Neko Ramen manga translated into English by Tokyo Pop, I've been granted permission to have him once again tag along as I live out my ramen dream.


So be forewarned. There might be a few Neko Ramen invasions in the future. In the meantime, check him out on facebook!