G. Snyder

Tsukemen at Tsujita L.A.

Leading up to this year's Best of L.A. issue (due out Oct. 4), we'll be counting down, in no particular order, 100 of our favorite dishes.

97: Tsukemen at Tsujita L.A.

Since opening last August, Little Osaka's Tsujita L.A. has quickly become the most serious purveyor of Hakata tonkotsu in town, a fact validated by the noodle-loving crowds waiting outside the building around opening time. Though it serves its ramen only during an abbreviated lunch hour -- out of concern that the dish's popularity would overshadow the dinner-time kaiseki menu -- the lengthy wait list for a table can often rival something out of the UCLA admissions department.

Head chef Kenta Ikehata once described to us the great pains he took to master his pork bone broth, a recipe he spent years perfecting in Japan. It was like raising a kitten, he said. If that's true, then the other item available at lunch, a bowl of thick slippery noodles and an intense thickened dipping broth called tsukemen, might be akin to a sabertooth tiger.

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T. Nguyen

Shoyu ramen

This is why we love the San Gabriel Valley. While other competitive eating contests are dominated by pizzas and hot dogs, the San Gabriel Valley prefers competing with ramen.

Ton-Chan Ramen on Las Tunas is hosting a ramen eating contest on May 20 from 3-5 p.m. The first-place winner will receive a year of free ramen, second and third will both receive six months of free ramen.

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C. Soudry

Miyata's tsukemen

Upon entry to the newest ramen shop on Sawtelle Boulevard, you're welcomed with shouts of "Hello, thank you for coming" in Japanese. Miyata Menji opened less than one week ago, taking over the shuttered GR/eats space. With its flagship location in Osaka, Japan, Miyata offers a simple menu with just two offerings: tonkotsu ramen with pork broth, teriyaki beef, shallots and fried tomatoes; and tsukemen with steamed noodles, anchovy cabbage, grated cheese, minced pork, vegetable potage, tomato and croutons.

Owner and "famous comedian" Menji Miyata wants to spread his food to the world, explains vice president of operations Akihiro Kanda. The 26-seat, cash-only restaurant, which opened on March 23, has yet to make any public announcements of its debut and is relying heavily on word of mouth and foot traffic for customers. "The ramen business is blowing up," says Kanda. On a recent rainy Sunday afternoon, the place was packed with families and solo ramenites.

Across the street, signage is posted for Clusi Batusi, a pizza joint opening this summer. More details to come.

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If this does not make you hungry, well, then there's not much we can do for you. The ramen -- they also have rice bowls and gyoza and tsukemen -- at Yamadaya is of the kind that won't leave you needing more food for some time. It is a study in pork more than noodles, although the noodles are excellent too. Rivulets of garlic oil, dark as crude oil, move around the surface of the bowl. The usual accouterments, plus lovely halved eggs that are cooked properly, their interiors dark orange and supple like mollets. Pork and more pork. If there was any doubt that the primary focus here is pig, the menu above, regenerated in word-cloud form, should put an end to that.

There are four Yamadaya iterations to date (Torrance, Culver City, Westwood, Costa Mesa), with a fifth one scheduled to open Sunday, April 1 (we do not joke about ramen), in Sherman Oaks at the corner of Ventura and Sepulveda. Go get a bowl of tsukemen (prounounced "ske-men") on your way back from Mammoth this weekend. Exactly.

T. Nguyen

Shoyu ramen at Ton-Chan

What distinguishes the Lady's Set from the Kid's Set at Ton-Chan Ramen is spam. Specifically, both combinations offer a half order of shio, shoyu or miso ramen, but the Lady's Set comes with sushi or salad, and the kids get what apparently is the Happy Meal toy of ramen combinations, spam musubi.

Ton-Chan is right next to the relentlessly crowded Golden Deli Vietnamese restaurant, meaning you're often sitting next to people whose palates were all ready for phở, and now must adjust their stock mindset. That transition from one noodle soup to another sometimes can be hard, especially if the most difficult decision you thought you'd have to make at lunch is whether you want the phở with all the tripe, or not. At Ton-Chan, you customize your bowl in a multistep process that is not quite as involved as Shin-Sen-Gumi's bingo card of options, but considerably more work than just rolling up to the counter at Daikokuya.

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[puamelia]/Flickr

Cup Noodles' lightweight packaging makes it prone to spilling

One of the many reasons why hospital emergency rooms are overflowing with patients? Instant cups of noodles. NPR reports that a good number of hospital intakes each week are victims who burn themselves with the scalding, but well-seasoned, hot water that cooks the instant noodles. In what inevitably will be fodder for products liability lawyers everywhere, doctors interviewed for the story look past user stupidity error and attribute the burns directly to an inherent defect in the cup's design.

According to the article, "The cups are tall, lightweight, and have an unstable base that makes them tip over easily." Dr. Warren Garner, director of USC's County Hospital burn unit, says that as a result of the cup's size and shape, toddlers often tip the cup on themselves. He does not, we note, volunteer an expert opinion about why toddlers are handling hot liquids in the first place.

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Anne Fishbein

tsukemen at Tsujita L.A.

This week Jonathan Gold considers Tsujita L.A., the newish ramen shop on Sawtelle. Tsujita is not exactly one of the crammed noodle closets that are the tsukemen shops in Tokyo -- 5 seats, Foo Fighters blasting, 15 minutes to slurp your noodles so the drunk guys outside can get in -- but it's a lot more peaceful and the noodles are pretty great. Perhaps we'll get some closets next year. Please?

Tsukemen is hip in all the usual ways, including obscurity, a stylized consumption ritual and flavor of an intensity that can be overwhelming the first few times out, like Skrillex or Scotch whisky.

Read the complete story in Gold's Counter Intelligence, "Friends, Ramen and Tsukemen," and check out Anne Fishbein's photo gallery. Then maybe get in your car.

LA Weekly Flickr pool/R. E. ~

This LA Weekly Flickr pool photo comes to you from photographer R. E. ~. (Yes, we know, but that's what you get when you keep uploading a whole lot of really great pictures.) A lovely shot of ramen at the newest branch of Shin-Sen-Gumi, in downtown's Little Tokyo. (For more on the current wave of ramen restaurants, check out our ramen map. And if anybody knows of any ramen places that use those cigarette-style payment machines, like they have in Tokyo, let us know. We miss them.) Have any brilliant shots of food you've taken around town recently? You might consider uploading them on our Flickr pool. Never know where they might show up.

Guzzle & Nosh

A bowl of tonkatsu ramen from Tanaka.

It was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it kind of thing: Last week, chef Takehiro Tsujita of Tsujita L.A. (a.k.a. Nidaime Tsujita), or rather, his ramen, popped up for one week only in Mitsuwa Marketplace. Serving as Tsujita's temporary training ground, Tanaka Ramen offered the same ramen that will be served at the Sawtelle Blvd. restaurant, according to Grubstreet LA.

The first three days, Tanaka served chuka soba. The next two days, the shop served their acclaimed tsukemen dipping noodles made with a broth of pork, fish and chicken. The last three days, they dished out tonkotsu (not to be confused with tonkatsu) ramen. We popped in for a bite and to compare it to Santouka Ramen, which is just spitting distance from Tanaka. It was a ramen rumble inside the Mitsuwa Market food court.

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Google Maps

Los Angeles is in the middle of a ramen renaissance. From new outposts of old favorites to noodle concepts that are avant-garde even by Tokyo standards, these last two years have been a ramen lover's dream. You want deeply rich pork broth Hakata-style? Bare, thick tsukemen noodles with condensed sauce on the side? Tomato basil ramen? You want it in Culver City? In Hollywood? Downtown? You got it.

Here's L.A. Weekly's definitive Los Angeles ramen map, marked with every ramen restaurant in town, including notes from L.A. Weekly writers to let you know which restaurant will best satisfy your ramen craving no matter where you are. Turn the page.

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