GoGo noodles

Woke up late and missed breakfast…AGAIN, so I was starving! What better way to satiate ones hunger than with home made ramen noodles? I’m not sure why it was so hard finding this place, maybe it was the growling stomach that distracted our focus. When we finally arrived, I was happy to see that 98% of the customers were speaking Japanese…good sign. Scanned the menu and the umani ramen caught my eye….and thought to myself…”so that’s what that was!” The crab omelette ramen at Gyoza No Osho in Hawaii with the gravy on top is umani style. I love learning new noodle facts on my noodle adventures.

This is the umani ramen, topped with an oyster sauce gravy and stir fried vegetables. When the waitress set the bowl in front of me, I got a big whiff of bamboo and was a little fearful that I had made a bad choice. But to my relief, the broth did not have a strong bamboo taste. Overall, the umani ramen was reminiscent of chinese chow mein, it has the same toasty wok flavor. The noodles were delicious! If you look closely, you can see the inconsistency of the fresh noodles. Umemura gets extra kudos for cooking a perfect egg! A first for me.


In contrast, the soup of the cha siu ramen didn’t smell like bamboo but it tasted like bamboo. Besides the mild bamboo flavor, the shoyu broth was pretty darn good. Overall, both broths had a very clean and wholesome taste. You can tell from the richness and complexity of the soup that the ingredients they use are fresh.

To top it all off, the gyoza was fantastic! The skin was thin and the filling was not processed beyond recognition. You could see bits of cabbage and meat and the slight imperfections were a clear indication that these were homemade.

Umemura
1724 W Redondo Beach Blvd
Gardena, CA 90247
(310) 217-0970

(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

 

 
I began another afternoon standing in front of the noodle closet trying to figure out which noodle to try. Finally, this udon…or U-dong as it says on the packaging caught my eye. I put a bit of a chinese twist on these korean noodles by adding a tea egg. There were also some tasty looking mushrooms in the fridge (I think these are trumpet royales?) so I decided to add to the udon as a meat substitution. When I opened the noodle package, it was the usual, there were two packets, one seasoning and one dehydrated assortment of veggies and sesame seeds. And same cooking routine for all korean instant noodles, I cooked the noodles for an extra 5-7 minutes because I like the noodles more tender (korean instant noodles tend to be thick and chewy.) I had no clue what “pojangmacha” means so I did a little research on the web and found out that a pojangmacha is a small tented restaurant or a restaurant on wheels that sell a variety of inexpensive snack foods. Most popular as a late night destination for snacking and drinking. FUN! I wish there were pojangmachas in the states. Now that I know what pojangmacha is, I still can’t figure out exactly what makes this “oriental” style though. Well, whatever it is, it’s mild and a bit seafoody. Definitely has a strong onion taste as well.

(1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Often times, the deciding factor on what noodle I’ll eat is dependent on what ingredients I have available in the fridge. Then I try to match it up to the the serving suggestion pictures. On this particular day, I had left over chinese broccoli in the fridge that I wanted to use up, so I went to the noodle closet and searched for a package that had chinese broccoli or something similar. As you can see, there are some greens in the picture of this maruchan tempura soba so this was the winner! I also had some cooked frozen shrimp and thought it would go nicely with the noodles and inadvertently created my own version of de-constructed shrimp tempura soba!

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Woke up starving one morning…er…afternoon and what better way to satisfy my hunger than with a tasty bowl of noodles? After standing in front of the the noodle closet for what seemed like forever because I could not decide, (everything looked so good!) I finally chose the spicy seafood flavor udon from Nongshim. The fun thing about this noodle is the round shape that fits perfectly in the pot. As with all Korean brand instant noodles, I find the noodles are on the very al dente side so I like to cook for an additional 5-7 minutes. This gets the noodes soft and chewy just the way I like it. The additional cooking time allows the noodles to soak up a lot of the broth. Because these are udon style noodles, they are a bit thicker which makes it a perfect broth soaker upper. Yum. The broth has a very strong seafood taste but the spicy is more on the mild side. The dominate flavors that come through are squid and garlic. I added only a handful of dried shitake to the soup and garnished with purple cabbage and green onions.

(1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...