Diet and Contest

In the beginning of February, my student / doctor took my blood pressure. 130/76. Not terribly high, but defined as pre-hypertension by a quick google search. My doctor's advice? You guessed it; stop drinking the ramen soup.

Let me make one thing clear. I hang out with ramen geeks. We drink ramen soup. Case in point, a recent video from Keizo, aka Go Ramen, aka the manager at one of the best ramen shops in Tokyo, Bassanova.

Actually, I am fairly in tune with my health. Go back 6 years and I was a 270 pound, Taco Bell eating, Mountian Dew drinking fat man. The story of my diet success is long, but the end result is that now I sit at around 180, and have never felt better. I watch what I eat, and was curious how ramen soup correlated to my high-ish blood pressure.

For the next month . . . no soup. Eat the noodles, spare the broth. It wasn't easy, but I did it. From 130/76 to 123/69. There you go. A month of no ramen soup and I dropped 5%. Was it worth it? Not really. Was it a truly scientific health study? No way.

I'm off for a bit of an adventure in America for the remainder of March. Will said adventure include ramen? Seeing as Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York are all in the cards, it is a likely possibility. Stay tuned. I will post some mini updates over at the Ramen Adventure facebook page, so head on over and click the いいね！ button already!

Speaking of facebook, I've got a contest over there. Leave a comment on or like the contest post to be entered. Good luck!

黒門 (Kuromon in Shinjuku)

西新宿 つけそば 黒門

Even though I had a dinner date later in the evening, walking with my camera in Tokyo will inevitably lead to a ramen adventure. Kuromon is in my neighborhood of Shinjuku, and I had passed the shop a few hundred times before. Unfortunately for Kuromon, it lies just off the main drag of ramen shops on Shinjuku's skyscraper side; too far for a random hungry walker to stumble in to by accident. Also, it is close enough to Nagi Nicai for a seasoned eater to avoid it all together. But like I said, I had my camera with me.

The 200g 麻辛丸 looked like the one for me. 麻辛丸 doesn't have much meaning, unless you sound it out. Ma-Shin-Gan.

This semi-automatic comes at you from a few angles. First, the soup is meant to knock you down with spice. More of a tang, this bullet was a dud.

Trying to flank you, the 200g of pork is a heavy hitter.

Wow. This much meat at a place without a crowd can be a bad thing. Being stuck with a quarter kilo of tough, dry pork is something I have done a few times in the past. Not keen to do it again.

Luckily, the pork here was excellent. Nowhere present in any best-of lists, but tender enough, once dipped in the soup, to be thoroughly enjoyed. The tangy, the fatty, the smoky; not bad.

But like I said, this shop is in the middle of a major ramen zone, and there are many tastier offerings.

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東京都新宿区西新宿7-10-12

Tokyo, Shinjuku-ku, Nishi-Shinjuku 7-10-12

Closest station: Shinjuku

Open 11:30-15:30, 17:15-24:00

Sunday 11:30-20:00

馬賊 (Bazoku in Nippori)

中国手打拉麺馬賊

You come here for the handmade-on-the-spot noodles.

Flour flying everywhere.

You come here for the noodles.

The ramen at Bazoku is definitely on the standard-tasting side. Don't expect wisps of kodawari flavors to come through anytime soon. But in the search for gourmet ramen, where rare and novel ingredients push the latest shop to the top of the list, it can be easy to forget what is so good about a simple bowl of noodles. The original purpose of that soup that has become so important was to keep the noodles hot. A little salty and fatty for flavor, in no way meant to come near the star of the bowl. The noodles are what sustain you. And the noodles here are cheap, irregularly shaped, and perfect.

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東京都荒川区西日暮里2-18-2
Tokyo, Arakawa-ku, Nishinippori 2-18-2
Closest station: Nippori

Open 11:00-23:30