and now a word about the truly important things...
today i entered my thirty ninth year alone in a new city, working to fulfill a nine-year dream.
there are a lot of things i could discuss right now - the fact that, contrary to public opinion, animatronic apes are really - really - hard to find and expensive to rent (the latex on most of the apes made for films disintegrates after a few months - especially if exposed to light - so few movie apes remain in usable shape unless they are dilligently maintained), or the finer points of negotiating with network standards and practices over how much like an actual rectum one can make an ass monster and still be able to show the thing on national TV, or how the production office for "the middleman" is right across the street from "battlestar galactica" and i will spend the next two months trying to sneak in for a lookie-loo...
...but that's not what i'm here to talk about.
i come to you on this day, my birthday, to talk about ramen noodles.
no, not the pour-in-the-boiling-water-and-die-from-salt-poisoning-while-trying-to-spear-the-one-green-pea-in-the-cup kind. no...i am talking about the real deal, thick yellow noodles bathed in a cloudy soup made of the finest black pork stock, lined with scallions, bean sprouts, pork slices (and sometimes a hard-boiled egg). for the past few weeks, i have been a devotee of los angeles' own daikokuya...and they have set a high bar to leap.
daikokuya is a narrow and shabby little tokyo lunch counter - alhough i hear that the funk was installed by design in order to accrue street cred and attract hipster foodies like myself - whose ramen is legendary...a thick, flavorful stew that is an optimal venue for one of my favorite past-times: bobbing for pork. truly the most salient part of the daikokuya experience is the pork, thick slices that fall apart into strips at the touch of the chopstick.
so, after a few nights of eating at the hotel restaurant - a place known as the hub of hollywood north, and apparently a stomping ground for every guest star in every show and movie filming in vancouver (in the same way that the alaska airlines direct flight from LA to vancouver is known as the hollywood north celebrity shuttle) - i finally decided to find the best ramen place around: which shouldn't be a difficult in a town with an asian community as large as this one.
the consensus seems to be that the best ramen in vancouver is to be had at kintaro ramen on denman street: but would it cut the gyoza? would this be the place to host my solitary 38th birthday celebration?
i am delighted to report that kintaro is every bit the equal of my beloved daikokuya. the place is absolutely bare bones in ambiance: lacking even the allegedly put-on grunge and sun-bleached 1960's advertising posters of daikokuya. kintaro is all about the ramen, if you are looking to be wooed by the scene, move along, hand-written signs and mismatched furniture are the order of the day here.
because it's all about the ramen - and boy is it glorious. for my first meal i chose the miso ramen. the soup is available in light, medium and heavy - i opted for medium, but am going for heavy the next time, and the pork is available as either lean or fatty. i opted for fatty, why? because it's my birthday, dammit, i deserve some flavor, and to my puerto rican palate, nothing spells F-L-A-V-O-R like pork fat.
like a symphony, the soup at kintaro is enveloping, a conflagration of flavors that continually reveals new levels with each ladleful. to me, the trick of good ramen is that - while you never lose sight of the fact that you are ingesting a heavy melange of pork and soy - with a not-inconsiderable amount of fat and salt - the soup never feels leaden or overwhelming.
my ramen nightmare is a thin, salty soup that leaves your mouth coated like a shotglass of oily gin: this is the hallmark of foam-cup ramen, and it must be avoided at all costs...ramen heaven is a hearty soup that leaves you satisfied - and kintaro delivers the heaven.
from there it's all about crunchy vegetables and the other white meat. the former is abundant, but not to the point of becoming filler (a common ramen mistake), the latter is not as skillfully integrated with the base soup as is the black pork at daikokuya, but spectacular nonetheless.
on a future trup to kintaro, i may stray from the straight and narrow and try their "cheese ramen." i have never had such a thing before, but it does seem to be a combination of a few of my favorite things. besides, what isn't made better by adding cheese?
(i harbor a fantasy of marketing a cheese donut - no, not a danish, an actual krispy-kerem filled with camembert - stay tuned)
now that my ramen needs are taken care of, it's all about finding the best boba in town. for the past few weeks befor emy move here, the wife and i had been making the 22 mile pilgrimage to the la suburb of rowland heights to sample the boba at the little bean, which is generally understood to be the best boba in los angeles (we recently tried every one of gridskipper's ranked spots and reached the same conclusion) - primarily because of the jade boba, little green pearls served not to warm or cold that explode with sweet, chewy, gummi goodness with every strawful.
now, i understand that the folks at the little bean also have a vancouver branch...but i certainly hope that there's a competition to be had here: the only thing more fun that drinking good boba is searching for good boba.
any sugestions?
there are a lot of things i could discuss right now - the fact that, contrary to public opinion, animatronic apes are really - really - hard to find and expensive to rent (the latex on most of the apes made for films disintegrates after a few months - especially if exposed to light - so few movie apes remain in usable shape unless they are dilligently maintained), or the finer points of negotiating with network standards and practices over how much like an actual rectum one can make an ass monster and still be able to show the thing on national TV, or how the production office for "the middleman" is right across the street from "battlestar galactica" and i will spend the next two months trying to sneak in for a lookie-loo...
...but that's not what i'm here to talk about.
i come to you on this day, my birthday, to talk about ramen noodles.
no, not the pour-in-the-boiling-water-and-die-from-salt-poisoning-while-trying-to-spear-the-one-green-pea-in-the-cup kind. no...i am talking about the real deal, thick yellow noodles bathed in a cloudy soup made of the finest black pork stock, lined with scallions, bean sprouts, pork slices (and sometimes a hard-boiled egg). for the past few weeks, i have been a devotee of los angeles' own daikokuya...and they have set a high bar to leap.
daikokuya is a narrow and shabby little tokyo lunch counter - alhough i hear that the funk was installed by design in order to accrue street cred and attract hipster foodies like myself - whose ramen is legendary...a thick, flavorful stew that is an optimal venue for one of my favorite past-times: bobbing for pork. truly the most salient part of the daikokuya experience is the pork, thick slices that fall apart into strips at the touch of the chopstick.
so, after a few nights of eating at the hotel restaurant - a place known as the hub of hollywood north, and apparently a stomping ground for every guest star in every show and movie filming in vancouver (in the same way that the alaska airlines direct flight from LA to vancouver is known as the hollywood north celebrity shuttle) - i finally decided to find the best ramen place around: which shouldn't be a difficult in a town with an asian community as large as this one.
the consensus seems to be that the best ramen in vancouver is to be had at kintaro ramen on denman street: but would it cut the gyoza? would this be the place to host my solitary 38th birthday celebration?
i am delighted to report that kintaro is every bit the equal of my beloved daikokuya. the place is absolutely bare bones in ambiance: lacking even the allegedly put-on grunge and sun-bleached 1960's advertising posters of daikokuya. kintaro is all about the ramen, if you are looking to be wooed by the scene, move along, hand-written signs and mismatched furniture are the order of the day here.
because it's all about the ramen - and boy is it glorious. for my first meal i chose the miso ramen. the soup is available in light, medium and heavy - i opted for medium, but am going for heavy the next time, and the pork is available as either lean or fatty. i opted for fatty, why? because it's my birthday, dammit, i deserve some flavor, and to my puerto rican palate, nothing spells F-L-A-V-O-R like pork fat.
like a symphony, the soup at kintaro is enveloping, a conflagration of flavors that continually reveals new levels with each ladleful. to me, the trick of good ramen is that - while you never lose sight of the fact that you are ingesting a heavy melange of pork and soy - with a not-inconsiderable amount of fat and salt - the soup never feels leaden or overwhelming.
my ramen nightmare is a thin, salty soup that leaves your mouth coated like a shotglass of oily gin: this is the hallmark of foam-cup ramen, and it must be avoided at all costs...ramen heaven is a hearty soup that leaves you satisfied - and kintaro delivers the heaven.
from there it's all about crunchy vegetables and the other white meat. the former is abundant, but not to the point of becoming filler (a common ramen mistake), the latter is not as skillfully integrated with the base soup as is the black pork at daikokuya, but spectacular nonetheless.
on a future trup to kintaro, i may stray from the straight and narrow and try their "cheese ramen." i have never had such a thing before, but it does seem to be a combination of a few of my favorite things. besides, what isn't made better by adding cheese?
(i harbor a fantasy of marketing a cheese donut - no, not a danish, an actual krispy-kerem filled with camembert - stay tuned)
now that my ramen needs are taken care of, it's all about finding the best boba in town. for the past few weeks befor emy move here, the wife and i had been making the 22 mile pilgrimage to the la suburb of rowland heights to sample the boba at the little bean, which is generally understood to be the best boba in los angeles (we recently tried every one of gridskipper's ranked spots and reached the same conclusion) - primarily because of the jade boba, little green pearls served not to warm or cold that explode with sweet, chewy, gummi goodness with every strawful.
now, i understand that the folks at the little bean also have a vancouver branch...but i certainly hope that there's a competition to be had here: the only thing more fun that drinking good boba is searching for good boba.
any sugestions?