Ippudo - East Village NYC

We arrived at Ippudo after a 90 min Bikram Yoga in the Flatiron studio. Exhausted and hungry, we headed to Ippudo, which was 5 minutes away. I heard about Ippudo when I was reading up on Minca, which by the way is the WORST ramen place to go in NYC. A lot of people mentioned this place with its flavorful brother and nice ambience, I got even more curious when a friend of ours (another NYC foodie) raved about this place. Ok, now we really got to go see what it's all about. Can it measure up to the bestest rame we had in Tokyo? We shall find out..

9:30pm on a Tuesday night. Place was pretty full; we waitted about 20 mins at the bar admiring the hundreds of ramen bowls on the wall. The bar top is a glass case, inside is filled with dried instant ramen (the square), pretty cool huh? The bartender offered us some green tea mochi dessert, even though we didn't order a drink.


Assort appitizer - $20. a waste of money and apptite. don't even wanna talk about it. skip.
Akamaro ramen
the original recipe with *guess what* CHILI sauce. you know your girl can't live without spicy things, so I went straight for whatever had chili in it. The verdict? OMFG! I almost fainted with the first sip of the thick white broth. Life, after all, is worth living, if you eat a bowl of $13 ramen at Ippudo. I wanted to go to the show kitchen and kiss the man who made this broth. I'd totally kidnap him and just have him in my kitchen making toniku soup base for me ALL DAY! i think i just got a little wet thinking about it, my mouth that is. get your mind out of the gutter!

Shiomaru ramen
The pimp daddy OG original recipe. H had to try the "original" *eye rollin'.. boringggg....* but as it turned out, IT IS SO FREAKING GOOD! but this time I did not switch plate with him as I usually do whenever his food is better than mine. For one thing, the chili sauce on my dish is soo good, i can't let her go to another man who doesn't know how to appreicate SPICE. The pork, the noodle, the soup, everything is just perfect, down to the scallion. I truly believe I was in heaven for that 15 mins I made food love to my bowl Akamaro.
Miso ramen with every topping available
H is 265lbs, fyi, so a tiny bowl of ramen is not going to satisfy him, even though it costs $13. He liked this joint so much, he's determined to try EVERYTHING IN ONE SHOT, not allowing a second visit to taste the other goodies. In this misco ramen, the noodle is a bit thicker, brother is lighter, and the condiments (extras) are so freaking good. The pork belly, pork meat, mango/pepper salsa, tea egg and bamboo shoots made up for another $10 on top of the $13 for the bowl of ramen already. $23 for a ramen orgy in your mouth is worth every penny. Even the odd mango salsa was worth the $2. I asked H what's that teeny little piece of black things floating on the soup, he said it's called "wok shit" in Chinese. It's the left over grease from frying the pork and not washing the wok after each dish. Let me just say, they should have charged for the "wok shit" too, and that shit tasted GOOD! left over grease? hell yea, pile it up!


I was responsible for finish all the soup. If I could have gotten a container and take those to go, I would. But that'd just be too ghetto. So I resorted to just burp profusely in the car, just to throw up a little bit in my mouth and taste all that goodness again.