I ate 146 bowls of ramen in 2021 in Japan and these are 5 things I learned
My ramen year in Tokyo has come to an end and I just published my list of ramen bowls I ate in Japan in 2021. As for many, the last year meant quite some additional free time to visit more ramen shops, to time for making ramen at home and to ramp up my video editing for my ramen YouTube channel.
After also eating 162 bowls of ramen in 2020, there are a few things I learned along the way. I also learn how little I actually know, bringing me to my first point.
1. I know not enough about ramen and too much at the same time
This is probably true for whatever hobby you engage in. For people outside of the hobby, you are the expert who seems to know it all. You are the one who is way too deep and does certain things way too often.
On the other end of the spectrum there’s always people who know more, do the thing more often, have seen it all and understand it on a deeper level than you. To them, you’re a beginner, someone who “hasn’t even done this and that thing!” and shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Depending on the perspective, you’re a beginner and an expert at the same time.
To give some insight into what I am talking about: 146 bowls in a year sounds like a lot, but it’s barely 10% of the number of ramen bowls Menterromaro eats per year.
Don’t let that discourage you. For every person that might look down on you for not knowing everything, there’s a hundred people happy to share and discuss on whatever level you are. (see point 5 for how to connect to them)
2. What makes it “ramen” is up for debate
At first it seemed so easy. Someone told me, the legal definition was:
“If there is kansui in the noodles, it is ramen. If there is no kansui, it is udon.”
Kansui is a kind of lye water, which is an alkaline solution made with mainly potassium carbonate and some sodium bicarbonate. To skip the chemistry lesson: It’s what makes ramen noodles “slurpy” and gives them their unique texture. However, to this day I have not found anyone who could point me to the exact Japanese legal definition. As reality shows, it seems you can call your ramen bowls whatever you want. Lots of ramen shops don’t mention the word ramen on their menus, their vending machines or anywhere else in the shops. Instead they use terms like “Chukasoba”, “Shinasoba” or some completely made up names. If it was a legal definition, you would assume that they had to display the exact term somewhere, no?
Whatever the legal definition may be (if there even is one), the more important definition is what people “feel” ramen should be. For a lot of people, a bowl of ramen is soup and noodles with lots of toppings. For many, the lots of toppings is already debatable. But what about tsukemen, the dipping noodle style of ramen? What about soupless styles of bowls like mazesoba or aburasoba, which look more like a bowl of pasta than ramen?
Like with many things, the debate will probably never find a clean conclusion, unlike the grilled cheese vs. melt debate on Reddit. Therefore I personally have decided for myself to fall back on the point with the kansui and accept all of them as ramen in my bowls (and on my hips).
3. There is no “best ramen”
Eating as many ramen as I do, I get the question all the time:
What is the best ramen?
Often I would ponder what to answer. Should I give the answer from the Japanese Yelp equivalent called “Tabelog”? Or the answer from the ramen otaku headquarter called “Ramen Database”? Do I really want to send people to shops that are top rated but require you to get up at 6am to eat a bowl of ramen at 3pm? Or do I condescendingly give them a tourist spot, that is easy access and will surely satisfy them, but isn’t super highly regarded by ramen heads?
Because I sure as hell can’t tell you my favorite because I don’t have one. Some smart person said “my favorite bowl is the one I haven’t eaten yet” and that has been my philosophy as well. I rarely visit shops a second time and if I do, I will very likely get a different bowl than I had before or I go for their limited specials (and that’s probably why I am visiting again). I wrote a bit more in detail about how difficult it is to give ramen recommendations, so my tip for you if ask a “ramen person” for advice:
Say what styles you like and roughly where you want to eat or where you are staying, they will be able to give you recommendations based on that. Don’t make us pick THE top shop out of a list of ten thousand shops, help us narrow it down. In the end, what you like and what the ramen nerd like might very well be two different things.
4. Making ramen is at the same time easier and harder than you think
Having had extra time at home in 2020 and 2021, like probably almost everyone, I looked beyond the restaurant bowls and tried my hand at making my own bowls at home. And it turns out, making ramen is not that difficult per se, it just takes the right recipes and a lot of time (especially without a pressure cooker). By now, lots of recipes and methods have been published online, the most famous English language ones being Ramen Lord’s Ramen Bible eBook and the Way of Ramen YouTube channel. Unfortunately the number of questionable recipes online has also increased (looking at you, Joshua Weissmann and Nick DiGiovanni, among others), but that’s a topic for another post. Having the correct methods and recipes, you also realize that you aren’t as restricted by available ingredients as you think.
So does that mean ramen shops outside of Japan are out of their mind to charge between $15 and $20 for a bowl of noodle soup? It’s a complaint I hear and read often. If it is so easy to make at home and if the bowls are so cheap in Japan, usually between $8 and $12, why is ramen so expensive outside of Japan?
Turns out that all these 3 things aren’t at all comparable to each other. Making ramen is very labor intense hard work in a hot and humid environment, you probably won’t get people working in a ramen shop for minimum wage. We could also go into the cost of ingredients. But the main factor is this: A Japanese customer is in and out of a ramen shop within 15 minutes of getting their bowl. Outside of Japan it’s more in the 45–60 minutes range. If you can sell 3 to 4 times more bowls per hour, you can have smaller margins per bowl, which directly translates into cheaper bowls.
In any case, trying to make your own bowls from scratch at home is the easiest way to cure the “this shop’s ramen is too expensive!” thinking and turns it into “they should really charge more for this”. Don’t let that stop you from trying to make your own though!
5. Love for ramen is best shared with others
While the act of hunting for the best bowls of ramen and slurping the bowls can be a solitary activity, it doesn’t have to be. There is a huge online community that gets together to share their love for ramen, homemade ones as well as the ones in shops in Japan and outside of Japan.
If you don’t know where to look, the Ramen Network Discord is the best place to share you bowls, knowledge and get all your ramen related questions answered. The next best place is r/ramen on Reddit.
For inspiration on where to eat once you visit Japan, there’s a plethora of Japanese and English speaking Instagram accounts to follow for tips. Here’s a few to get you started:
- Ramenguidejapan (en)
- Ramenbeast (en)
- Ramenadventures (en)
- 5amramen (en)
- Thenoodleslurp (en)
- Tokyomensclub (en)
- Susuru_tv (jp)
- Menterromaro (jp)
- And last but not least: Namajapantv (en)
And now the hidden pro move: Message these people and directly ask them for recommendations like I mentioned above! All of them will be more than happy to help you out with some ideas. They are also up for some ramen banter and can guide you towards guides and recipes if you are in need.
Hopefully the situation in 2022 changes for the better, so this becomes actually valuable information for your potential ramen eating trip to Japan.