Odd new ramen place in Little Tokyo

Just tried this new ramen place in­side Weller Court called Chin-Ma-Ya of Tokyo, right below the in­fa­mous Oro­chon Ramen. Their spe­cialty is tan tan men, a fu­sion of ramen with Chi­nese dan dan mian. They serve it with three lev­els of spice, and I or­dered the spici­est “orig­i­nal”. The broth was good – very thick and murky, lots of good fla­vor, and ad­e­quately spicy. It lost a bit in the top­pings, com­ing with ground beef, ground pork, and only a few stray bits of spinach. I got a side of gyoza, which while not the worst I’ve had where def­i­nitely far from the best.

But where it re­ally failed was the noo­dles. The first bite im­me­di­ately made me think of some­thing I never thought would come to mind in a ramen place: my mom bak­ing cook­ies. Cu­ri­ously tak­ing an­other bite, I tasted it again. The fla­vor was al­most like unsweet­ened cookie dough. I’m usu­ally down for try­ing new things, some fla­vors need to just grow on you. But after eat­ing half the bowl I couldn’t take any more – the heav­i­ness of the noo­dles com­bined with such a strange fla­vor was too much for me.

Looks like Daikokuya gets to keep their crown, with San Sui Tei com­ing in sec­ond if the Daikokuya line is un­bear­ably long. Last time I went to San Sui Tei, they cooked up some fresh choco­late-filled mochi balls for me. Not sure if they will be the norm or if they where test­ing them on me as a re­cur­ring cus­tomer, but they where good!

Posted on January 17, 2009 in Food, Japanese, Little Tokyo, Ramen

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