My brother lives near this japanese market in columbus, so that’s where we do a lot of the grocery shopping, that and the korean market nearby. This also has a little eat-in japanese food restaurant as well, tensuke express. And people, they have ramen.
My mom and my bro both got the combo meal of beef bowl and soba. If you need more food after this, then I certainly hope you are a sumo wrestler.
My sis-in-law got the pork cutlet. I think that’s her standard order. It comes with miso soup and a heap of colorful veggies. I really like that they try to sneak you into eating some veggies with your giant hunk of pork.
As for me, I had to get my ramen in, while I could, so I got the kimchi ramen. And yes, it was delicious! This place is one of the few reasons that I’m glad my brother lives in columbus!

Since I can’t get ramen at home, whenever I’m in a place where I can, I get it. Upon Shirley‘s recommendation, I went to Boom. It’s by the same people who run Blue C Sushi, which is a Seattle conveyor belt sushi place. There are a couple of Booms in the area and I visited the one in Bellevue, which is connected to a Blue C. The place is big and modern, with a bar, lounge, and dining area.
I decided to try the pork buns just for kicks. I had no idea if they’d be decent, and to my surprise, I liked them! The buns themselves were warm and soft and fresh. The pork was shredded and fatty, which made it a bit juicy. For veggie fillings there was lettuce, cabbage, cucumber, and cilantro. It was all served with a ginger cherry plum sauce. Really, these were pretty good!
I wanted some spice so I got the kimchi tofu, with braised pork, tofu, kimchi, raw egg, and green onion in a spicy miso broth. The broth, kimchi, and the noodles were all pretty good, but it was a bit weird. The pork was in big hunks. It made it hard to eat. They really should think about slicing it. I liked the tofu quite a bit. But cilantro in kimchi ramen? Do they not know how much old korean ladies tend to abhor cilantro? To mix cilantro and kimchi is a bit scandalous. It was still nice to eat ramen though. I already miss it. Service was meh. I ordered a drink but I never got it. Yep, the server just completely forgot about it. At least he didn’t charge me for it, that would have made me livid.

Even though I’d just stuffed myself with ramen a few days earlier, that wasn’t going to keep me from eating some more. This time, I was outside of the city, at Ramen Dojo, in San Mateo. This place is great because the menu is so small. You get ramen. That’s pretty much it. And they all come with pretty much the same thing. You can pick from between a few broths, and you can get extra toppings if you want. You can also pick the spiciness of your broth. But otherwise, ramen is what you get, and you get it with what they give everybody. I like the ease of this place.
All of the ramen come with roasted pork, fried whole garlic, kikurage mushrooms, chives, a little quail egg, chicken gravy, ground chicken, shiitake mushrooms, chopped ginger, dried shrimp, sesame chili oil, and shredded red pepper. A got the soybean broth, skipped the chives, and got extra mushrooms. This is good stuff. The whole red leaf lettuce thing is weird though.
I got the soy sauce broth and added kimchi. Yo, this was amazing. And there was tons of food. The bowls look deceptively small, but there’s quite a lot of food in this. I could have eaten this all day. I could have done without the chives and the shredded red pepper though, as they didn’t do anything for me. I found the red pepper rather annoying and stringy. The quail egg also wasn’t that fantastic. I would have preferred a simple hard-boiled chicken egg instead. But the noodles were fantastic, so was the broth, and whoever supplies them with their kimchi deserves a medal. This is quality stuff. Oh Ramen Dojo, why can’t you be near my house?