I have never yet been to Japan, but whenever I visit a big city, I try a ramen shop. To be honest, so far it has been a let down. IDK, I guess maybe I'm expecting too much from a bowl of soup, with noodles and condiments. As a form factor, it's genius. But for the price that it is usually sold at in western cities, it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I feel like it has been a bit too overhyped for what it is.
BTW, you can also replicate the form factor using western cooking ingredients/traditions and it still works pretty well.
San Francisco is an example of a place with higher than average Japanese population where you have a chance of getting some really good authentic stuff. I recently ate at a place that caught my eye with chicken katsu curry, and that meal teleported me back to Japan.
That’s true in my experience, but Ramen in Japan is actually considerably better. The only good Ramen I ever had in Europe was in Düsseldorf but the owner imports pork from Japan.
I was actually surprised by the selection of cities in the OP until I learned that the author is the director of AI at der Spiegel. Related to the other comments on the 3D: maybe this can evolve to some gaussian splatting/diffusion world model thing...
agreed. i think the economics of ramen make less sense outside of japan, where it’s more expensive and turnaround is slower because folks linger longer (often to amortize the cost of waiting to get seated in the first place).
In Düsseldorf that’s not the case. The Japanese restaurant are very distinctly less chill than other restaurants. Like, where you’d usually spend 3 hours in a normal restaurant, it is kinda expected that you eat and leave a Ramen shop within an hour.
I've been to Japan - the first cheap buy-and-nuke-at-home ramen from the konbini around the corner I ate there completely blew me away (†)! It was decisively better than what I would realistically expect to get in a restaurant in the west. I don't know how they do it, but I learned never to underestimate the Japanese people’s dedication to their craft.
(†) For the curious, it was chāshū ramen.
Edit: To avoid confusion, I do not mean instant ramen, but a plastic bowl of chilled, pre-prepared take away ramen soup.
For most foreign dishes you can't just compare the total price to local food. I'm saying that having ordered pizza in Japan, and an actually good one with Buffala for instance will be twice to three times the price you'd pay in Italy.
Ramen chains managed by Japanese people are decently good when I tried them in France (Ippudo for instance), it's not that far from what's served in Japan. It costs 1.5x to 2x more, and the default orders will be slightly adapted to the locals (harder noodles and lower grease by default) but that's par for the course.
> BTW, you can also replicate the form factor using western cooking ingredients/traditions and it still works pretty well.
The toughest part is the sheer amount of time to prepare the soup and dexterity to get good noodles. Spending 8h on the soup with all the ingredients, and repeat I don't know how many times to get to a decent balance is a dedication I don't think I'll ever have to be honest.
Not everyone can fly to Italy for a pizza to save money! But seriously, pizza in most countries is horrible. When I lived in Ecuador the pizza had some really funky cheese. I'm not sure if you can even call it cheese. That's probably why it is almost impossible to order a plain cheese pizza. They are trying to cover it up with an assortment of vegetables and meats.
I don't think this is unique to Ramen at all. Burgers should not cost $20-30 for some limp smooshed beef, a burrito should also not be $15-20, and tacos should sure as hell not be $3-5 per tiny taco. It's all bullshit; none of that food is worth that money. But... I suspect it costs that much because people pay that much, and because the cost of every other aspect of service puts pressure on the restaurants to try to push the ceiling of what it's worth.
As a ramen lover, I try to take advantage of value oriented cheaper pricing when it's available.
As a relatively tall active man, I need to pregame restaurants with something more cost effective, and even still need to order 1.5 to 2x what everyone else does in order to feel satiated. (~82kg, 192cm)
At least ramen takes some time to eat. When I go into a standard burger place nowadays, it takes me literally 20 seconds sometimes to finish a $20+ burger, and then I'm just sitting there waiting for people to delicately nibble their way through what is a deeply overrated culinary experience, in many cases. Like c'mon, give me some damn food, I'll go get it myself.
I don’t know where you live, but in the Bay Area prices have exploded since COVID. I remember a decade ago when it was still possible to get a super burrito for under $10; in fact, the price was $7.75 for a carne asada super burrito at El Farolito in San Francisco. A burger was under $10, a deli sandwich was about $8-9, and tacos were around $1.50 at Taco Bell and no more than $3 at a proper taqueria. The prices weren’t cheap, but they never felt bank-breaking. Unfortunately prices have skyrocketed since COVID. Unfortunately my income hasn’t matched; I made the individually fulfilling but poor financial decision of pursuing a research career and not working for OpenAI/Anthropic/FAANG/NVIDIA. Thus, two years ago I quit eating out in the Bay Area, except when socializing. It’s sad making six figures and feeling priced out of dining out, just like I’m priced out of housing and RAM since I can’t compete with Big Tech. I now cook, which I guess is healthier but is also time-consuming.
Japan, on the other hand, is heaven for those with US dollars. A bowl of ramen is around ¥1,100 here (I’m here on a research visit), and they generally taste amazing! Even a Big Mac meal from McDonald’s is far cheaper than in the Bay Area.
The Big Mac thing is kinda sad, just a few years ago I used to tell people who complained about the increasing cost of fast food “You just gotta use the App!” Which was true, with the McD’s app, a Big Mac might be something like $3 or maybe buy-one-get-one in the app, but $6 in store. But it seems like those days are over, the fast food places realized they were losing too much margin as more and more people started using their apps. Oh well, better to cut way back on fast food consumption anyway.
> it takes me literally 20 seconds sometimes to finish a $20+ burger, and then I'm just sitting there waiting for people to delicately nibble their way through
Honestly, that sounds like a you problem. Maybe try eating instead of guzzling. You may even find time to enjoy the food.
It's almost like people have different taste in food!
It's also kind of a wild take "I have nearly zero experience in <thing from other culture> and I don't understand why people from that culture enjoy it"
Re price and prep
First, it's quite difficult to make. Try it, lol.. but by your admission you haven't had anything decent.
Second - in Japan, Ramen is mostly pretty cheap, a lot of places have a vending machine where you pay for a bowl and get a ticket with an order number. It's really not a fancy or pricey experience unless you're somewhere upmarket.
> But for the price that it is usually sold at in western cities
What are those prices specifically? In Barcelona (one of those western cities, imo) at a good ramen place, you get Gyozas for ~5 EUR, and a nice ramen for ~12-14 EUR, add a drink and you end up with ~20 EUR per person, which strikes me as relatively affordable for eating out, but maybe the metropolitan prices have biased me over time. Is this expensive/cheap compared to the other cities you've tried ramen in?
> BTW, you can also replicate the form factor using western cooking ingredients/traditions and it still works pretty well.
Isn't that just a stew at that point? How is it still ramen if you switch out all the ingredients and the broth that makes ramen ramen?
Besides fast food, isn't it always like that though? Of course Japanese food is cheaper in Japan, but I bet Spanish food is more expensive there than in Spain? Or Peruvian food being a lot more expensive in Europe compared to in Peru itself, it kind of makes sense.
But I think the point is that paying 7€ makes it a pretty good deal, at 14€ for "a bowl of soup" it becomes a meh experience.
Similarly, as an Italian abroad, I can get a decent pizza margherita in Budapest, but it costs 12 euros and I get upset every time, you shouldn't spend that much for a bit of dough and mozzarella :)
Loved Tatsu-ya when I lived there. If you like Japanese food and you haven’t been yet, you should check out Asahi imports (on Burnet, not too far from Komé, which is also great, although I heard they [Asahi] also have a location in South Austin now). Great fresh onigiri, kara age bento, etc. I used to go like twice a week.
Same as always, because people upvote it, probably it's interesting to a bunch of people.
> What to Submit - On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
New York City has great Ramen options. I find yelp rating a lot more indicative of the food quality than Google ratings.
Something that has seriously increased my trust in Yelp:
There's this one restaurant that has always been my favorite within 100s of miles and recently I noticed they had a top 100 in the USA poster for their cuisine on the outside from Yelp. It doesn't mention what rank specifically, just top 100. I look it up and they are in the top 10.
So I really have no idea how Yelp was able to figure out that this restaurant is so good and to rank it in a way I agree with. It could be just based on reviews because it does have close to 5 stars but regardless it's impressive.
Google seems inflated: I feel like the meaningful range is between 4.5 and 5 stars, so 4.5 stars is just okay, and as you get closer to 5 stars it’s more likely to be actually good. Yelp does not feel as inflated to me.
Agree that NYC has great ramen. One of my favorites (in LES) was in fact in TFA.
this reminds me of a naive and happier time in tech, when i built a game called ramendan with twitter’s open API. you had to eat ramen every day for dinner, and tweet proof with the hashtag #ramendan, link to a photo (this was before twitter supported images), and geotag it so that we could make sure it was after sundown in your timezone.
So nice to see Bankara Ramen in Bangkok here - one of my favourite places, and you always see Japanese customers eating there, so you know it passes the local abroad trial :-)
Pre-Covid, this restaurant would regularly have queues down the street to get in. But it’s a small place. Basically the size of someone’s front room. Definitely worth a visit.
Kanada-Ya is a chain with at least 5 locations in London, and while they're fairly good, they're still somewhat focused on Deliveroo-type transactions.
It remains quite different from a genuine ramen shop in Japan.
Obviously, there can't be any movement, because it's just a single photograph - and if that were all, then perception would adjust accordingly.
But because of the rotation, suddenly movement is added back - only, the contents of the photo don't follow it, so the whole thing now looks like a plastic replica of a ramen dish instead of the real thing.
I agree. It's just the .jpeg rotating through css. It's inspired by (as mentioned on the website) rotatingsandwiches; those are actually 3D photographed (or filmed) with a fixed light source
Just the opening scene is must-know : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeVhZkbAc5k
:)
BTW, you can also replicate the form factor using western cooking ingredients/traditions and it still works pretty well.
And, like burgers you do have high end joints too.
Also, like burgers ramen isn’t considered “healthy” food. High sodium and somewhat low in nutrients. It’s basically fast-food.
(†) For the curious, it was chāshū ramen.
Edit: To avoid confusion, I do not mean instant ramen, but a plastic bowl of chilled, pre-prepared take away ramen soup.
Ramen chains managed by Japanese people are decently good when I tried them in France (Ippudo for instance), it's not that far from what's served in Japan. It costs 1.5x to 2x more, and the default orders will be slightly adapted to the locals (harder noodles and lower grease by default) but that's par for the course.
> BTW, you can also replicate the form factor using western cooking ingredients/traditions and it still works pretty well.
The toughest part is the sheer amount of time to prepare the soup and dexterity to get good noodles. Spending 8h on the soup with all the ingredients, and repeat I don't know how many times to get to a decent balance is a dedication I don't think I'll ever have to be honest.
As a ramen lover, I try to take advantage of value oriented cheaper pricing when it's available.
As a relatively tall active man, I need to pregame restaurants with something more cost effective, and even still need to order 1.5 to 2x what everyone else does in order to feel satiated. (~82kg, 192cm)
At least ramen takes some time to eat. When I go into a standard burger place nowadays, it takes me literally 20 seconds sometimes to finish a $20+ burger, and then I'm just sitting there waiting for people to delicately nibble their way through what is a deeply overrated culinary experience, in many cases. Like c'mon, give me some damn food, I'll go get it myself.
Japan, on the other hand, is heaven for those with US dollars. A bowl of ramen is around ¥1,100 here (I’m here on a research visit), and they generally taste amazing! Even a Big Mac meal from McDonald’s is far cheaper than in the Bay Area.
Honestly, that sounds like a you problem. Maybe try eating instead of guzzling. You may even find time to enjoy the food.
It's also kind of a wild take "I have nearly zero experience in <thing from other culture> and I don't understand why people from that culture enjoy it"
Re price and prep
First, it's quite difficult to make. Try it, lol.. but by your admission you haven't had anything decent.
Second - in Japan, Ramen is mostly pretty cheap, a lot of places have a vending machine where you pay for a bowl and get a ticket with an order number. It's really not a fancy or pricey experience unless you're somewhere upmarket.
What are those prices specifically? In Barcelona (one of those western cities, imo) at a good ramen place, you get Gyozas for ~5 EUR, and a nice ramen for ~12-14 EUR, add a drink and you end up with ~20 EUR per person, which strikes me as relatively affordable for eating out, but maybe the metropolitan prices have biased me over time. Is this expensive/cheap compared to the other cities you've tried ramen in?
> BTW, you can also replicate the form factor using western cooking ingredients/traditions and it still works pretty well.
Isn't that just a stew at that point? How is it still ramen if you switch out all the ingredients and the broth that makes ramen ramen?
But I think the point is that paying 7€ makes it a pretty good deal, at 14€ for "a bowl of soup" it becomes a meh experience.
Similarly, as an Italian abroad, I can get a decent pizza margherita in Budapest, but it costs 12 euros and I get upset every time, you shouldn't spend that much for a bit of dough and mozzarella :)
https://ramen.haus/united-states/austin/tatsu-ya-the-og/
> What to Submit - On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
How many upvotes (in orders of magnitude) are needed to get to the front page is still a mystery to me.
I wonder if there are "slow days" on which it might be easier because there is less voting in general.
> No cookies. No tips. No JavaScript. Just ramen.
I cannot help but wonder if Claude wrote this copy. Not that there would be anything wrong with that, I am just curious.
Something that has seriously increased my trust in Yelp:
There's this one restaurant that has always been my favorite within 100s of miles and recently I noticed they had a top 100 in the USA poster for their cuisine on the outside from Yelp. It doesn't mention what rank specifically, just top 100. I look it up and they are in the top 10.
So I really have no idea how Yelp was able to figure out that this restaurant is so good and to rank it in a way I agree with. It could be just based on reviews because it does have close to 5 stars but regardless it's impressive.
Agree that NYC has great ramen. One of my favorites (in LES) was in fact in TFA.
edit: it looks like my firefox linux have a "prefers-reduced-motion: reduce" set...
So I discovered that setting animation to instant on kde, tell the browser to reduce motions...
Tabutchan in Osaka was the confirmation that it is the most delightful form of food invented by mankind.
https://www.pechakucha.com/presentations/the-savory-month-of...
https://ramen.haus/united-kingdom/london/cha-mori-ramen-kana...
Pre-Covid, this restaurant would regularly have queues down the street to get in. But it’s a small place. Basically the size of someone’s front room. Definitely worth a visit.
It remains quite different from a genuine ramen shop in Japan.
And it’s obviously going to be quite different from Japanese restaurants because London isn’t in Japan (surprise surprise).
I think the problem is, with that kind of lighting, you'd subconsciously expect a lot of movement. ( like in this animation: https://kotaku.com/unity-3d-ramen-noodles-art-artist-tech-vf... )
Obviously, there can't be any movement, because it's just a single photograph - and if that were all, then perception would adjust accordingly.
But because of the rotation, suddenly movement is added back - only, the contents of the photo don't follow it, so the whole thing now looks like a plastic replica of a ramen dish instead of the real thing.