To date, I have taken approx 65 pics of food and posted them to FB. To me, taking a picture of my food and sharing it with a faceless online posse is the modern-day atheist version of giving thanks, saying grace - something I used to do when I believed in one more god than I do now.
This semi-religious ritual of blessing my food via BB has resulted in the accumulation of multiple ramen shots, many unidentified. I'm here to right this wrong, and give every dish its dues while I can still remember the fats and flavours of each bowl and the friends I shared them with.
Yasai Ramen, Yamagoya. This is my favourite ramen in Bangkok so far. My colleagues and I go to the one in Amarin Plaza, Lumphini at lunch, though there are 'cooler' ones elsewhere. This store has everything going for it - abundant condiments (sesame seeds, chili powder, chili oil, fresh ginger and garlic - all in cute containers), a wide selection of ramen, 'authentic' Japanese-style miniature tables (ramen consumption is self-regulating in this way - eat too much ramen and you can't fit in the chairs anymore), it's a good price, and the Amarin outlet has the regulatory cute Isaan waiter on duty refilling hot/cold green tea. I go for the yasai ramen without fail - the sprinkling of 'vegetables' makes me feel less guilty about ingesting liquid pig fat. The fried crispy pork belly is also amazing. Somehow we make it back to work without having a coronary event.
Ramen is 150-180 THB per bowl (less than AUD5). (Google just told me there's a Yamagoya around the corner from my house at 98-102 Surawong Rd. Joy.)
Sakura, Level 6, Atrium Zone, CTW.
This is another favourite lunch destination. Free, abundant condiments in cute containers, dim lighting, private booths, big bowls, inexpensive. They have yasai ramen here, too (ichidai yasai ramen 180 THB), but the CTW outlet is primarily for shabu buffet, so sometimes they don't have all the ramen options. Ichidai nori ramen 170, (seaweed) is an acceptable back-up choice. The animated menu on their webpage is classic ramen porn and great for inspiring intense hunger pangs at 11.30am.
Bankara Ramen, Soi 39
This is a famous Japanese chain, apparently, but I found the broth here too fatty. The bowls were big, the price same same, there was fresh garlic in cloves on the table, and it was busy, but the ramen itself was unremarkable. Perhaps I was expecting too much. The most vivid memory I have of this place was a young woman yelling IRASAIMASEN!!!! really loudly at every single person who walked in. Pics of the place (minus screaming woman). I suppose I could give it another chance, but then life's too short to waste on mediocre ramen.
Kuu, CTW Level 7
Another lunch venue. This one has reliably patchy service, a lot of service tax, and they frequently fuck up our orders (like bring 4 cold teas and a hot tea to a table of 3 people then act confused, like we ordered 5 refillable teas), but for some reason we keep going back. It may be lack of imagination and the restaurant's position on the top floor of CTW. (For lunch, we kind of drift up the mall's escalators in a stream of office workers. If you're not conscious of where you're going - as we so often aren't, in our hypoglycemic state - you just end up at Kuu.) They have lunch specials here and you get a scoop of ice cream, so it's not a bad place to be. The broth isn't so tasty - we always end up adding a lot of condiments - but the gyoza and bacon/asparagus skewers are good. Lunch at Kuu always ends with deep feelings of calorie-related guilt. Again, why do we go there?? (This review says it all)
Ramen Tei, Soi Thaniya, Silom
I like ramen tei because there's no gimmick. It's not trying to be Japanese, which makes it more Japanese. It's always full of lone anti-social salarymen slurping loudly at the front-row seating area, which is enough of an endorsement for me. It's also one of the only places along soi thaniya that isn't a brothel, which speaks for itself. (There's a place next door where you can eat sushi off a naked woman, if you're not completely repulsed by the idea of that, as I am.)
The problem here is stomach capacity. The servings here are big enough to share between two, especially if you've been greedy and ordered gyoza and a set and beer and green tea as well. Ramen is about 150THB. It's not so much a place to socialise and if you talk too loudly, people trying to watch sport on the LCD will give you the stink eye.
Chabuton, the place with the big obvious ramen display, pictured at top.
This is the TV Champion place. I do not rate it. Overpriced (250THB++ for a bowl), you always have to wait, the tables are TINY, there's no ambiance, they would not custom cook some cabbage for my friend (who always deviates from the menu - as people should be allowed to do), there was no dipping sauce for the karage chicken, and everything there costs extra. I don't remember the flavour of the broth, because the drama of everything else outweighed it. Also 250 baht!! Then there is the further insult of offering small bowls for 180THB.
Cold ramen, Bakudanya
My colleague had an issue with this place - namely, they charged extra for the chili oil and did not provide it on the table. This is a thing with some places - you order your dish according to level of spiciness and once you've ordered, you can't change the level. This is more a question of service than anything else, since he did ask 'is this spicy' and she did say 'yes', so we erred on the side of caution, since you can't take chili oil out once it's in. Long story short, they charged an extra 40 baht each for three drops of oil (you can buy lunch for 40THB on the street) and were unapologetic about bad service.
That aside, my food was good. I had cold ramen, I'm not Thai, so I don't need to have everything super spicy to enjoy it, the portions were big, the karage chicken was amazing, the cold ramen was fresh and there was a cute Isaan chef. All my boxes were checked. They also had big ridiculous paper bibs.
Itadakimasu!Volume 2 coming up...
