Ramen

For those who are unfamiliar to ramen... Ramen is a Japanese noodle dish, consisted of noodle, soup and a variety of topping. In general, there are four flavors of soup, which is based on 1.pork bone, 2.miso(soybean paste), 3.salt, 4.soy source. Typical topping is some chopped green onion, sliced roast pork, laver, boiled egg and so forth.

With its elaborately prepared soup and dedicated attempt to make a subtle difference from other shops, some ramen shops won popularity, and these usually have a long line of people waiting for a bowl of ramen even outside the shop.

In San Diego, regrettably, we haven't encountered any of ramen shops satisfying our appetite, and this fact spurs our desire to eat ramen. It frequently ends up leading us all the way to LA only for a bowl of ramen. Our pick yesterday was Shinsen-gumi.

Shinsen-gumi（新撰組） in LA
Traditional ramen of pork bone soup.
Both the noodle (thin noodle) and the soup taste are good, but it's not extraordinary. I will likely to go there again, but unlikely to visit LA only for this shop.

Chabu-ya(ちゃぶ屋) in LA
Modern pork bone ramen topped with fried green onion.
As I slurp, the soup got excessively rich and it's a little too thick for me.



Santouka(山頭火) in Costa Mesa in the OC.
Noodle itself is worse than Santouka in Japan, but I like this the most amongst three.