Queuing for ramen

The soft-boiled egg is FavorFlav’s Emma’s favorite topping for ramen. For this version, she stood in line for a very long time in mountainous Takayama, Japan. 

“If there’s a line, it must be good,” is exactly what I thought when I saw a whole bunch of Japanese people gathered outside a restaurant. No English sign and no idea what they sold at the restaurant, but the length of the line promised good things. My order was taken while I waited; I could choose between regular or large, oh, and whether I wanted an egg on top.

After standing still for an hour in autumnal Takayama, I was pretty cold, but fortunately, upon entering I got exactly what I was craving. A steaming bowl of ramen with pork, fresh bamboo, plenty of black pepper and a perfectly cooked egg.

Pork, pork and more pork

What makes ramen different from, for example, Vietnamese pho or Indonesian soto ayam? First, the broth, which is usually made from a combination of pork and chicken bones. The four basic types of ramen are shio (salt), miso, shoyu (soy sauce) and tonkotsu (pork, pork and more pork), all filled with thin egg noodles. But there are hundreds of versions, each doing something slightly different. Almost every bowl of ramen you order is topped with a good slice of chashu pork, nori, spring onion and—my favorite—a marinated, soft-boiled egg.

Culinary hero David Chang put ramen on the menu at his New York restaurant Momofuku, and before long the whole world was captivated by this ultimate comfort food. And that’s great, because for anyone who doesn’t feel like spending three days in the kitchen making broth, there are now plenty of ramen restaurants. In the Netherlands, you can eat good ramen at Fou Fow ramen and Ramen-Ya, both in Amsterdam, and at Set Noodles & Hotpot in Rotterdam.

Text: Emma de Thouars
Photography: Emma de Thouars