Ramen Alley

Along with beer, Sapporo is known for interesting ramen and curry soup. Both were on our to-eat list. While walking through the streets of Sapporo looking at ice sculptures we came across Ramen Alley.

First, a little history of Sapporo's unique ramen. Traditionally, noodles are served in a soy sauce-flavored soup, which was cooked with soy sauce in soup stock of pig bones. The pork/soy sauce flavor is very popular and is what we traditionally eat at our favorite ramen restaurant. In Sapporo, residents began using miso (soybean) soup as the base for noodles. Additionally they started adding stir-fried vegetables to it. Miso ramen has a distinctly different flavor - and it is spectacular!

Some Japanese men came out of a shop while we were walking down the alley. They were boisterous and shouted, "This one is good!" as they walked by. Sounds like enough of a recommendation to me. Inside we went. To the smallest ramen restaurant I've been in. Six stools and a small square for the chef.

Big pot is miso and vegetables. Front area cooked two pieces of pork.

Seaweed, egg, bamboo, onions, cabbage, mushrooms - yum!

Hokkaido gyoza - no pork, filled with fresh green onions

Pick your bowl and pay the machine. Safer for the chef.

All the ingredients are local to Hokkaido. The green onion gyoza was a little different. Their green onions are sweet and very mellow. We gobbled up our warm miso ramen. It was perfect and helped warm us up for the rest of our exploring in the freezing cold.

Ramen

Now that we have a car our exploring radius has gotten much bigger. Tonight we drove out to a ramen restaurant that was recommended by some of Dustin's coworkers. It is called Nagahama. Now I like ramen. I like cheap 22 cent ramen so I was expecting to be blown away by "the real stuff". And I was.

I got a set that included a rice dish. It starts with sticky rice, a layer of dried seaweed, Japanese pickles, bean sprouts, and roe. Yep, fish eggs. I didn't like them so Dustin ate them for me, but the rice, pickle, and sprouts were good.

The ramen was very good. I added ground pepper and fresh garlic. Yummy! Dustin added fresh garlic, red pepper oil, and 'ramen sauce'.

The best part was the gyoza. The man makes it fresh and then fries it super fast (about 3 seconds) in this machine. It sounded like a vacuum.

We got a small surprise when our drink as brought to us. Usually when you sit down you automatically get a hand towel to clean your hands and a small glass of water. This time it was a foggy liquid that tasted like dirty water. At first we weren't sure if this was just a dirty restaurant and their water was bad. I texted a friend and sent this picture. She said it is a tea that comes with noodles and is either a Japanese bean or wheat tea. At least it wasn't dirty dish water, but not my cup of tea.

Definitely pretty tasty for a Tuesday night!