Tag Archives: ramen

Real ramen is finally coming to Denver, and it’s about time

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osaka ramen

My most recent Denver ramen was at the original Osaka Ramen location in the RiNo district. I had the special Miso Ramen of the day with an order of kara age fried chicken.

sobadeliveryjapoan1960sI grew up in Japan when I was a kid, and have vivid memories of bowls of ramen and soba noodles stacked high in bowls or boxes, being delivered by crazy men riding bicycles through crazy Tokyo traffic like the photo on the right. Ramen had been around since the late 1800s in Japan, but it was during the post-WWII years, and particularly in the 1960s, when ramen became the ubiquitous Japanese comfort food it is today.

I loved ramen as a child, and when my family moved to the states in the mid-‘60s I was sad to find that ramen wasn’t sold in the few Japanese restaurants that were available here. But in 1970 Nissin, the company that invented instant ramen in 1958 began selling instant ramen in the U.S. The next year, the company rolled out Cup Noodles.

Several generations of college students have grown up with instant ramen and Cup Noodles since the ’70s. Who can argue when each savory serving can cost just pennies? Lots of people even use instant ramen as a base for fancier dishes by adding meats and vegetables. But I think that’s cheating. If you want to have some “real” ramen, nothing beats going to a good ramen-ya (shop) for a steaming bowl.

The steaming hot soup of a real bowl of ramen is salty and meaty with hints of chicken, pork and fish bathing together like it’s a friendly hot tub of flavor, and the noodles are firm and chewy (though a good ramen-ya will offer the option to have your noodles hard or soft to your liking) with just the right amount of absorption of the soup, and the toppings can be creative but respect tradition. The experience is several cuts above plopping a square of fried dried noodles into a saucepan for five minutes or pouring boiling water into the styrofoam cup and waiting two minutes with the top flap closed (no peeking!). Instant ramen is cheap, but it’s not food for the soul. The noodles are immediately limp, the soup is flavored hot water (though it can fool your brain into thinking you just ate some real food) and out of the box the topping are… well, there are no toppings.
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A Colorado ramen roundup: Noodling on a theme

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Miso Chashu Ramen at Sushi Spot in Boulder

I was severely depressed a month ago, when I sauntered up University Hill from the University of Colorado campus for my semi-regular fix of ramen from Bento Zanmai, the fast foodish takeout counter aimed at the student population in a funky food court alongside a pizza joint and Thai, Middle Eastern and Nepalese counters, and found the ramen spot was closed. I was too upset to call Sushi Zanmai, the parent restaurant that also owns Amu, the super-fine izakaya.

But today, as I pondered lunch options I decided to find out whaddup with the demise of Bento Zanmai. It’s been closed, yes, I know, but what? Its entire menu is now being served just around the corner on the Hill at Sushi Spot, a slightly more upscale sushi restaurant that the Zanmai folks also own? Cool!

I should say upfront that although I love sushi, I’m not big fan of the crazy variety of special rolls that have been invented to entice and entertain Americans as sushi became mainstream in the past two decades. To me, even a California Roll (which I know is these days commonplace in Japan) is a mutant invention. I mean really, rice on the outside? Avocado? Come on….
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Oodles of noodles: Ramen has quietly become hip in Colorado

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The Miso Lobster Ramen is the ultimate dish at Bones, the non-Asian noodle house in Denver.

Erin and I have always been wistfully jealous of our friends in Los Angeles and San Francisco, for lots of reasons but not least the fact that they can eat killer ramen any night of the week. We have our fave ramen-yas in both San Francisco’s Japantown and LA’s Little Tokyo (“ya” means “shop”). There’s also great ramen to be had on the East Coast — I’ve slurped up wonderful noodles and steamy broth in New York City’s funky little “Japantown” district on the lower East side

In Denver, for many years we had only one ramen-ya: Oshima Ramen, which was good (albeit pricey) when it opened about a decade ago, and has over the past few years become increasingly dirtier and greasier, and the ramen less special and more bland. As it went downhill, it gave us less and less reason to drive all the way across town for a sad bowl of noodles. Some people (including some food critics who don’t know better) think it’s “the real thing” but uh, sorry.

So Erin and I have made it a holy mission to find good ramen without flying to the coast, and some brave Japanese restaurants have met the challenge just in the past year or so.

The best we’ve found in the area is Okole Maluna, a Hawai’ian restaurant an hour north of Denver in the tiny eastern plains town of Windsor, whose owners serve a killer Saimin (Hawai’ian-style ramen). There’s a very good, very authentic ramen served in a little take-out food court in Boulder called Bento Zanmai. Although it’a a bit unorthodox, the miso-ginger ramen served at the late Hisashi “Brian” Takimoto’s East Colfax restaurant, Taki’s, is very good. And now, even the fast-foody Kokoro is serving ramen (but at only one location, on 6th and Broadway, and only after 4 pm). We keep hearing about a Korean-run Japanese restaurant in Longmont that we haven’t made it to. But as you can see, we’re willing to drive for a good bowl of ramen, so we’ll get there eventually.

Imagine our surprise, then, to find that there’s been a veritable explosion of ramen happening right under our nose (is that a triple mixed metaphor?) — and that it’s not ramen made by Asians! Continue reading →

Update on ramen at Bento Zanmai in Boulder

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Bento Zanmai on the Hill in Boulder serves up tasty real ramen.

We returned to Bento Zanmai today and got some good news: the shop, which operates out of a tiny food court on The Hill in Boulder, just across the University of Colorado campus at 13th and College, has extended its hours.

The joint used to close up at 6 on weekdays and 3 on Saturdays. It unfortunately still closes at 3 on Saturdays (we got there just in time after seeing an early — and cheap — showing of Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino” movie, a post to come). But it now stays open until 8 pm on weekdays.

Joe Simonet, the affable young hapa who’s a corporate officer of the Sushi Zanmai restaurant corporation that owns Bento Zanmai as well as Amu, the izakaya next door to Sushi Zanmai that’s currently our favorite Japanese restaurant in the region, chatted with us about Bento Z.
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Bento Zanmai in Boulder hits the ramen spot

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Bento Zanmai in Boulder serves wonderful, rich ramen.

OK, I can stop whining. I’ve been on a ramen hunt for a couple of months. But I’ve finally sated my jones, with a trip top Bento Zanmai on the Hill in Boulder.

Unlike Los Angeles, where a row of ramen shops take up most of a block along Little Tokyo, and San Francisco’s Japantown, which has a several stellar restaurants that specialize in ramen, Denver is a ramen-lover’s desert island. We’re stranded in a place with no ramen in sight, and we’re left holding an empty bowl and a pair of chopsticks.

I overstate our condition. We used to go to Oshima Ramen, but it’s not as good as it was when it opened a decade ago. Plus, their ramen is pricey.

We’ve heard about a couple of Japanese restaurants north of Denver that apparently serve ramen, but we just don’t feel like driving that far. We’ll make the trip someday.

But when we were dining at one of our favorite restaurants, Amu, in Boulder (we live close to Boulder, so it’s not so far), we were talking with the owner, Nao-san, and we groused that he should serve ramen. He said, quite nonchalantly, that he was already serving ramen. Conversation at the izakaya‘s bar, where he was making up people’s tapas-like orders, came to a silent halt. The 10 people at the bar asked, in unison, “You make ramen? Why didn’t you say so?”

He explained that the ramen was available at his new restaurant, Bento Zanmai, at 13th and College in Boulder’s University Hill neighborhood. He warned that the ramen was only available from 3 to 6 pm — weird hours — but I was ready. I wanted ramen.
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