Archived entries for Restaurants
Midtown delight: Menchanko Tei
We enjoy eating ramen. We like to eat it a lot. But having started a ramen blog makes the eating experience different than in the past, somewhat more meaningful. And since Ramenized went live, there’s a more conscious push to get to the next bowl asap.
So we found ourselves back at Menchanko Tei two nights ago. It’s one of those things- before you are aware of something, you never encounter it. After you learn of it, you find yourself often confronted by it. We went to Menchanko Tei on E. 45th St the first time last Friday. Saturday night we were dropped off after a snowboard trip right around the corner from the restaurant. But because of our gear, we wanted to spare this fairly classy joint of our presence. After a short debate whether to try out the other branch on W. 55th St or not, Tuesday night we found ourselves back at this Midtown ramen temple.
We started with a small dish of Tako Wasabi (octopus). It’s like an octopus cerviche that will clear your sinus! We loved it’s slimy-ness, too. It’s definitely one of those appetizers that you don’t inhale, but instead accompanies you throughout the meal. We decided to order a traditional bowl of Shoyu instead of a heavier broth, much tempted as we were (gotta watch our waistlines!). The photo of the Menchanko soup really called out to our stomachs so we also got a Miso Menchanko noodle. Excellent choices.
The miso came in a huge piping hot cast iron bowl and had all that would satisfy a non-pork ramen eater like me: tofu, fried tofu, shrimps, cabbage, spring onions, soy sprouts, fish ball, and chicken (8.5/10). Paradise! I was especially pleased to enjoy the flavorful juices offered the whole prawns. That’s an authentic Asian dish, alright. The broth is a complex mixture of soy-based broth and miso, with seafood flavor (9/10). The Menchanko noodle is thicker than the typical ramen noodles. Al dente, bouncy, chewy, you name it, it has it (8.5/10). The serving was so big that we had to take home half of the bowl, which was perfectly fine, because I knew that even as leftover, these noodles will be good.
Olaf had the the shoyu ramen ($8.50) which were really great (8 on a scale of 10), the broth superb (9), firm and yummy noodles, produced freshly every day on premises (8), other ingredients included bamboo, slice of fish cake, a small piece of nori (6). The pork was good but a little dry (7). We added a soft boiled egg which was an extra $1.50 but it was perfectly soft and tasty.
It was overall a great experience, especially with the average price tag of under $10 a bowl. I am sure we will become regulars at this place. East Village has always been our go-to for Japanese food, even though we know that it was Midtown that the Japanese first conquered. Midtown – our new frontier.
We are ramenized!
The first time I had pizza my mom was the chef and the pizza came from the freezer. That was in the 70s when frozen food really tasted like frozen food. This incident formed my perception for a long time until our family traveled to Italy where I had my second pizza. After I watched the maestro create this little piece of art, it was served from a fiery wood burning oven. It was one of the best things I ever ate, I can still remember it.
Something similar happened again years later. Before I came to New York, I only had 99c ramen from a bag, the stuff you eat when you are a poor student and you spent your last money on books (um, ok beer). When I came to the city I had my first “real” ramen in a Japanese restaurant and I couldn’t believe how good it was. Since then I developed a passion for ramen which grows everytime we find a new place or try an new variation.
Now, there are many ramen places in New York City, most of them in the East Village, some in Midtown and a few more elsewhere in Manhattan and the boroughs. It’s hard to keep track of where you went and how it was. Sure, there is Yelp and we even have an account and write reviews every now and then. But we thought, how cool would it be if there was just one place to go to read everything about ramen in New York? And that’s what Ramenized.com is for – our central ramen repository! We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.