Hakata Ramen, Shin-Sen-Gumi / Little Tokyo

Growing up in a Japanese family, I have had MANY a bowl of ramen. Something about this magical soup makes me feel so content. Maybe it's the thick warm delicious broth? Or the fat spoon/chopstick dance with the noodles as you loudly slurp them into your mouth? OR it could be the tasty toppings of pork, green onions, seaweed and bean sprouts swimming around in the liquid that call out to me? I'd say it's all of the above. A good bowl of ramen makes me very happy.

Hakata Ramen with Pork Belly Charsiu, Seaweed, Bean Sprouts, & Spicy Miso

Last night I was in Little Tokyo and found myself with a ramen craving. Luckily Shin-Sen-Gumi was just a block away and so we dropped in for dinner. SSG is known for their custom ramen menu where you have a bevy of topping choices to go with your noodles. I ordered 4 toppings to go in my bowl but my hungry friend had about 7 which was definitely way too much food. So note to self, go easy on the toppings! Also keep in mind that they charge you more for the extras so you could end up with a pricey bowl if you're not careful.

Ramen Order Form- photo credit Ginny Song

The selection of toppings were a bit overwhelming so I stuck with the standard choices. You can also choose how you want your noodle cooked, the amount of oil and how strong of a flavor for the soup base. The additional toppings came on the side which pretty much took over half our table LOL.

A sea of yummy toppings :).

We also ordered some gyoza to start off the meal but they were super tiny and so I didn't feel they were photo worthy. I would skip the gyoza next time around. Our bowls of ramen hit our table pretty quickly once our toppings arrived. I loaded all my ingredients in and dove in! The noodles here are actually quite thin, almost somen like. At first I was kinda disappointed by it but then I tasted that rich delicious broth and just got lost in the ocean of noodles. The ramen here is really really good! So tasty that I somehow managed to fit it all into my belly. I would definitely come back to SSG and maybe try an adventurous flavor profile next time. p.s. - I slept really well that night :).