There once was this ramen-ya in San Jose called Do-Henkotsu. What made this place unique among a dozen or so ramen-ya in the area was its regional color and the owner’s (whose name I never got to know) pride in it.

The ramen itself was pretty good, maybe not the best, but different from most of the Kanto-style ones. The shop also displayed quite a few posters and offered magazines about Tokushima, a town in Shikoku where the owner is from (it’s where I learned about “Awa Odori”, a local festival whose dance I recognized immediately while watching “Kaze no Haruka”).

But the best part about the restaurant was the “itame”, stir-fry rice dishes. I still remember first trying the “nira itame” (stir-fry with leek, vegetables and pork over rice), then “kimchi buta itame” (stir-fry with kimchi, vegetables and pork over rice), and then finding out that “kimchi don” was the same as “kimchi buta itame”, but cheaper! :p Man, I really really loved “kimchi don”.

Then it closed, in early 2007 and is replaced by another (more generic) ramen-ya, Kahoo in March 2007. This place serves pretty standard ramen with their own “spicy” versions.

I’ve seen the chef of the new restaurant before. He used to help out the Do-Henkotsu’s owner. I think I first saw him late last fall. I was thinking he must be helping out and was secretly hoping that this new guy might be a new “franchiser”…

But alas, he was just learning the ropes, and the transition plan must have been going on for quite some time. I am just sad that I didn’t have a chance to say thank you and goodbye.

So, thanks for all the kimchi-don and other itame I enjoyed. If you ever plan to get out of a retirement, again, let me know.

I love sushi: Not the rolls, not sashimi, just nigirizushi. But I am also cheap. :p

For the past couple of years, the sushi place of choice for my wife and I were Sushi Maru in Sunnyvale, CA. It was a bit far from where we lived, but we loved its “price-performance ratio” (PPR). (If that wasn’t a factor we would go to Ino Sushi in San Francisco.) For a sushi boat place, their fish quality was very good. We’ve always ordered directly from the chefs and their cuts were fairly large and the taste were very good.

Well, that’s what we thought until a couple of weeks ago.

I think I’ve seen the sign for Sushi Expo around the neighborhood since I moved into the area a couple of years ago. But it never occurred to me that a better sushi place would be around the neighborhood. Also, the place was behind a couple of buildings from the main street and in a strip mall that looked deserted, so I didn’t think it could be that good.

Was I ever wrong! (And they’ve been around for almost 10 years.)

It turns out the Sushi Expo’s PPR is even better than Sushi Maru’s (both are sushi boat places). Their cuts are larger, and the bills are 10~20% lower. Some expensive items (cho-toro, for example) are maybe more expensive, but the quality was very good. On bonus, you get fried head for ama-ebi!!! (This has been the reason why we haven’t been enjoying ama-ebi at Sushi Maru).

For my wife and I, saba has to be good at a sushi restaurant. We order mostly saba, hamachi, and sake. We usually order toro, uni, ama-ebi toward the end. They were all good here.

Also, they seem to have various “creative” rolls. They aren’t really my thing, but they seem to be popular among the mostly non-Asian regulars.

Sushi Expo is run by a Korean chef/owner, Kevin. He is pretty cool (but we liked Eric, the other chef). The first time we were there, we thought the decor was “interesting”. I mean “interesting” by the TV showing CMT and country music playing in the background. I guess the fact that the place is a bit away from the center of Asian communities and most of their regulars are non-Asian probably played toward the ambiance. But did we care? No, the fish quality is very, very good. I’d say at least equal to Sushi Maru. And it is cheaper.

We did not try much else besides sushi. But we did order agedashi tofu once. That was not great. Had a very weirdly chewy texture. I think we would just stick to sushi.

My wife and I think agreed that we don’t have to drive far any more for good PPR sushi.

Take a look at this AP graph of the recent trend in the crude oil prices. Basically, it’s been hitting record high for the past couple of weeks.

But what happened at the pump here in San Jose, CA? It’s been going down!. Usually, the pump price would go up as soon as the “bad” news is up! What’s going on here? Someone must be assuming the cost!

Well, if my “theory” holds up, my guess is that we may not see the pump price until November? :p

This seems to be the latest ramen-ya in the South Bay. From their website, Ramen Halu (ラメン晴) opened in early 2003. I came across the name while “researching” for other entries and we decided to try it out.

It is not too far from Tokushima Ramen Dohenkotsu. It seems the place draws quite a few crowd and I think it will draw a nice contrast to slightly different styles of ramen.

The shop has a small counter (seating maybe 5 or so) and about 9 tables. There is a signing sheet inside the shop. I guess the owner likes surfing because there are a couple of boards up on the wall.

They have three flavors: Halu (pork), Tokyo (soy sauce), and Shio (salt). You can add more toppings (e.g., chashu). Actually chashu looked leanest.

The interesting thing about the place was the noodle. Halu ramen comes with thicker ones and the others with thinner ones. The thicker ones are thicker than those found in other places. I really liked the thicker ones. I didn’t care that much for the thinner ones.

For dinner they seem to have some more appetizers, but mostly, it’s only for ramen like most other places.

As I was looking for different ramen places around the area, I found this shop last December. It might have been around longer, but I didn’t know about it.

Tokushima Ramen Dohenkotsu (徳島ラーメンどへんこつ) is in the same complex as the Mitsuwa market, so the traffic seems to be relatively high. It is “hidden” onto one corner, but it’s not that difficult to find the place (right next to the PC Bang).

Tokushima is a prefecture in Shikoku (四国). It seems the owner is from the prefecture and the shop claims Tokushima ramen is different from others, and you can kind of see that. I can’t tell the difference about the noodle itself, but the chaashuu is definitely different. It looks close to marinated thick slices of bacon.

I think the soup is a pork flavor (豚骨, tonkotsu, “pork bone”) and they have only one flavor. They have two bowl sizes: medium and large. I think their large is about the same size as or a bit smaller to that of Ryowa.

As I mentioned in another post, it’s interesting to note that in this shop, ramen is also called chuuka-soba (中華そば, “chinese noodle”) and you can see the term all over the shop walls.

Beside ramen, they also have some stir-fries and stuff (a la Chinese). I haven’t tried them though.

I like their ramen. Their flavor is much stronger and their soup has more body than Ryowa’s, I think. However, they are pricier.

They have bars (for about 10?) and several tables (5 or 6). It’s a bit small. They have a satellite TV showing Japanese broadcasts (whatever is on, usually) and a small collection of manga (with a tongue-in-cheek warning to return them to the shelf when done).

However, there is something special about RaaMen (ラ―メン/”ramen”). I am not certain about the origin of the name, but the term came about in the early 20th century in Japan.

Certain times, it is also called ChuuKaSoBa (中華そば/”Chinese Noodles”). Soba is a Japanese word for “noodles” and I think when that kind of noodles were introduced in Japan, it was named such to differentiate from Japanese noodles that existed.

Another indication that it is related to China (or that people think it’s related to China) is that most Ramen shops (in and outside Japan) have a decor of Chinese restaurants (the designs on the bowls, the soup spoons, the woks, etc.). However, this could have been more of a marketing device.

Whatever the origin of the noodle was, that is not all that makes a Ramen. Ramen is a Japanese food with its unique characteristics of the soup, the toppings, and the culture.

As for me, while growing up in Korea, I was only exposed to the instant versions (takes 5 minutes or so to cook in a boiling water). And indeed, I thought that and the cup versions were the only variations of Ramen till I saw “Tampopo” in 1995.

I realized that the Ramen that I knew were only a “frozen pizza” version (not that I don’t like instant ramen)! I stumbled onto Ryowa Ramen in Mountain View, CA one day in 1996 and got a taste of what it could be. And when I had a chance to visit Japan in 2001, I tried several shops in Kyoto and Tokyo.

Anyway, there are a couple of pretty good Ramen-ya around where I live (San Jose, CA). And with the help of World Ramen Net‘s DB, I was able to find a couple more.

I don’t know why more people aren’t getting into Ramen (non-instant) as much as Pho. Maybe it’s the cost… Maybe it’s the misconception that most people have about Ramen being instant.

Hmm… I need to get my GukSu fix…

I left work a bit early because I was a bit tired (the Monday thing). But when I got home, I felt like going to a bookstore. On my way there, I noticed a smoke trail (or moisture trail that is left by plains) up in the southwestern sky (from San Jose, CA) around 7:05 p.m. It did look like a jet trail, but the thing seemed to be moving quite fast straight up. It looked a lot more like a rocket to me. So, I stopped the car to the side of the road and opened up the roof to see it better. It seemed to shoot straight up and disappeared after what seemed to be two booster fires. It was quite amazing although it was for a few minutes with all the trails.

[Just talked to our in-house rocket expert, Erik Ebert, and he told me there was a military exercise.]
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I guess I haven’t been to Barnes and Noble (Santa Clara, CA) recently, but when I got there, I noticed these new listening stations in their CD section (I was told that it has been a couple of months since they had them). These were made by RedDotNet. What’s different about these from other digital listening stations was that these had bar-code scanners. You put any CD under the scanner and you will be able to sample the tracks.

There were two types of stations: one with a touch-screen LCD and one without one. The one with a touch-screen LCD were mainly used to promote certain CDs with extra information. However, you can scan any other CD if you want to see the descriptions.

True, the samples are quite short (30 seconds?), some information was incorrect (one of Marian McPartland’s CD came out as some hard-rock CD), and you have to manually advance to the next track (which might be a good thing because people usually leave the station without stopping the player), but this was wonderful. I really liked it because now I can sample those CDs that I was curious about, but wasn’t inclined to buy one. The only thing is the keeping the database up-to-date, but I am sure they have a dedicated company for this.