Slurp Shop

Tonight our colleagues in Japan took us to a Ramen Noodles restaurant. When I heard that is where we were going I have to admit I was initially disappointed. Ramen has never really excited me....pretty boring and not very tasty. I know guys that lived off Ramen in my fraternity in college (mostly the Maruchan brand pictured here), but I couldn't do it. It was just not filling nor tasty enough for my liking.

We walked into the restaurant and it was a pleasant atmosphere. 2 very large irregular shaped tables made out of tree trunks filled the entire room. Each table sat about 12 people....so you were sitting next to or across from strangers....but I found that pretty humorous. Here is why.

Directly across from me was a mother and a child of about 6 years old. As most Japanese men do, I am assuming the husband/father was still at work. Here is a nice mother and son dinner together out of the house. They received their ramen before we did. Now I know my wife will be reading this and I apologize to her, but the mother was gorgeous. One of the most beautiful women I've seen so far in Japan. She was very well dressed and proper. But then the eating began. Evidentially as I learned once our food arrived, it is proper to slurp your noodles in such a place. Well this women basically buried her face down near her bowl and start grabbing at the noodles (again with CHOPSTICKS) and loudly slurping them into her mouth. This lasted for a good 15 minutes. I almost laughed out loud 3-4 times. Here was a gorgeous, proper Japanese woman, slurping her food like a 5 year old. But with the chopsticks....you really have no choice.

Now to the ramen...My bowl arrived and I took my first bite. INCREDIBLE! So good I took a picture for remembrance. I am not kidding. If ramen in the U.S. were like this, I probably could have lived off of it in college. The soup had such a great flavor and the strips of pork in it were as tender as any filet I've had. I could not get enough of it.
Then I realized...I was slurping like everyone else. It was so good and you wanted so much of it so quickly, that slurping was the only option. You could only keep the noodles on the chopsticks for a few seconds so you moved them to your mouth as fast as possible and slurped them away. I told my colleague that I wanted to go back to the U.S. and open such a restaurant. He said there is a very similar chain that has a few in the U.S. and he thinks there might be one in Chicago. We are going to follow up on that tomorrow in the office. If there is one in Chicago, I am getting the address and going there next time I'm in the city.

What a far cry from Maruchan Instant Noodles! I can now say that I LOVE authentic ramen.