Republic Ramen opens, noodle craze hits Arizona
Last month, The Arizona Republic’s “Chef Dish” feature profiled restaurateurs about what they thought the Valley food scene was missing. Nobuo Fukuda, the James Beard Award winner formerly of Sea Saw and deep into plans to open his new Japanese restaurant in downtown Phoenix, lamented that we didn’t have ramen readily available.
Indeed, in Fukuda’s homeland of Japan, ramen shops are as ubiquitous as Starbucks; the skinny noodles are sold in good restaurants, at casual roadside stands called ramenyas, or even in tiny subway-station shops where diners stand at counters and slurp from enormous bowls with unabashed gusto.
In the United States, ramen shops are increasingly hot-ticket items in many big cities like Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, served as street food, or with expensive bells and whistles a la the trendy Momofuku in New York.
Yet though it’s taken several years, the ramen rage seems to finally be creeping to Arizona. Several restaurants now feature it on their menus, and last month, Republic Ramen & Noodles opened in Tempe specializing in nearly nothing other than.
Why the passion for what’s long been considered college dorm cuisine? Originally a Chinese dish, the now traditional Japanese staple bears little resemblance to the salty Styrofoam junk students score at 10 bricks for $10. Rather, true ramen requires a complex, quality broth simmered for hours.
If you ate at Nine05 in downtown Phoenix before it closed in March, you know how luxurious the soup can be. Chef-owner Matt Carter put together a high-end version, stocked with chunks of unctuous pork belly, strips of crisp, charred scallion, a poached local farm egg, and buttery brown broth for $16.
Although the offerings at Tempe’s new Republic Ramen are simpler, the store covers most of the bases in distinctive broth styles for $6.95. A block from Arizona State University’s Tempe campus, the fast-casual, contemporary café serves up stock bases of shoyu (soy sauce), miso (fermented soybean paste), shio (clear salt), and a house specialty ramen structured in traditional broth but kicked up with spicy exotic peppers.
Add-ins include char siu (Japanese pork), scallion, naruto (the Japanese fish cake accented by a pink swirl in the middle), bell pepper, egg, kimchi, corn and bean sprouts. A couple of sides round things out, like gyoza, fried rice, squid salad or edamame.
“Arizona has been behind on some of the trends,” said Rey Perez, who owns Republic with his wife, Kim Ahn. “We lived in New York City when we attended NYU dental school, and we were exposed to the ramen bar concept back then. Kim is also from Los Angeles, and just in the last three to four years, there has been such a wave of ramen bars opening up, especially by the universities.”
Perez says he and Ahn collaborated with ramen chefs from Los Angeles and Tokyo to come up with the perfect broth. In-house, their chef, relocated from Los Angeles, makes the stock from scratch, and is working on a summer menu that will add cold soba noodles, spring wraps and edamame hummus, plus a vegetarian ramen that substitutes seaweed and kelp for the traditional pork and chicken broth.
At Geisha A Go Go in Old Town Scottsdale, chef Andrew Nam has been serving ramen for nearly a year. The $9 dish explores Japanese comfort food through fresh noodles topped with bean sprouts, egg, bamboo shoots and char siu.
“People have this perception that ramen is for college students on a dime, but the true interpretation of ramen is an artistic expression of broth and noodles,” Nam said. “It is a very important staple in Japanese cuisine, with a deeply rooted history and evolved process. Japanese chefs have great pride in their broth, as an artist would have pride in their work.”
For Cherry Blossom Noodle Café at Ninth Street and Camelback Road, ramen has held a place of honor on the menu since the shop evolved from a Japanese bakery to a full-service restaurant in 2002. Owners Chizuru and Charlie Ishida make magic in big bowls, with their “hakata” of sliced barbecue pork, green onion and kikurage mushroom ($6.85); the “takana” (hakata with pickled vegetable, $8); or miso soup with salmon ($8.60).
The ramen craze has even hit the chains. After testing ramen on its menu since last summer, Pei Wei Asian Diner has made its on-again, off-again chile beef soup a fixture Valley-wide.
The fusion-accented recipe combines egg noodles glazed in a soy-mirin-chile sauce, wok-seared vegetables and flank steak, topped with a sprinkling of cilantro and a spritz of lime. Non-beef eaters can get the $6.75 meal stocked with chicken or vegetables and tofu, or shrimp for a dollar extra.
Details: Republic Ramen, 1301 E. University Drive, Tempe, 480-388-3685, republicramen.com. Cherryblossom Noodle Café, 914 E. Camelback Road, Phoenix, 602-248-9090. cherryblossom-az.com. Geisha A Go Go, 7150 E. Sixth Ave., Scottsdale, 480-699-0055. geishaagogo.com. Pei Wei Asian Diner, locations Valley-wide at peiwei.com.
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Last month, The Arizona Republic’s “Chef Dish” feature profiled restaurateurs about what they thought the Valley food scene was missing. Nobuo Fukuda, the James Beard Award winner formerly of Sea Saw and deep into plans to open his new Japanese restaurant in downtown Phoenix, lamented that we didn’t have ramen readily available.
Indeed, in Fukuda’s homeland of Japan, ramen shops are as ubiquitous as Starbucks; the skinny noodles are sold in good restaurants, at casual roadside stands called ramenyas, or even in tiny subway-station shops where diners stand at counters and slurp from enormous bowls with unabashed gusto.
In the United States, ramen shops are increasingly hot-ticket items in many big cities like Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, served as street food, or with expensive bells and whistles a la the trendy Momofuku in New York.
Yet though it’s taken several years, the ramen rage seems to finally be creeping to Arizona. Several restaurants now feature it on their menus, and last month, Republic Ramen & Noodles opened in Tempe specializing in nearly nothing other than.
Why the passion for what’s long been considered college dorm cuisine? Originally a Chinese dish, the now traditional Japanese staple bears little resemblance to the salty Styrofoam junk students score at 10 bricks for $10. Rather, true ramen requires a complex, quality broth simmered for hours.
If you ate at Nine05 in downtown Phoenix before it closed in March, you know how luxurious the soup can be. Chef-owner Matt Carter put together a high-end version, stocked with chunks of unctuous pork belly, strips of crisp, charred scallion, a poached local farm egg, and buttery brown broth for $16.
Although the offerings at Tempe’s new Republic Ramen are simpler, the store covers most of the bases in distinctive broth styles for $6.95. A block from Arizona State University’s Tempe campus, the fast-casual, contemporary café serves up stock bases of shoyu (soy sauce), miso (fermented soybean paste), shio (clear salt), and a house specialty ramen structured in traditional broth but kicked up with spicy exotic peppers.
Add-ins include char siu (Japanese pork), scallion, naruto (the Japanese fish cake accented by a pink swirl in the middle), bell pepper, egg, kimchi, corn and bean sprouts. A couple of sides round things out, like gyoza, fried rice, squid salad or edamame.
“Arizona has been behind on some of the trends,” said Rey Perez, who owns Republic with his wife, Kim Ahn. “We lived in New York City when we attended NYU dental school, and we were exposed to the ramen bar concept back then. Kim is also from Los Angeles, and just in the last three to four years, there has been such a wave of ramen bars opening up, especially by the universities.”
Perez says he and Ahn collaborated with ramen chefs from Los Angeles and Tokyo to come up with the perfect broth. In-house, their chef, relocated from Los Angeles, makes the stock from scratch, and is working on a summer menu that will add cold soba noodles, spring wraps and edamame hummus, plus a vegetarian ramen that substitutes seaweed and kelp for the traditional pork and chicken broth.
At Geisha A Go Go in Old Town Scottsdale, chef Andrew Nam has been serving ramen for nearly a year. The $9 dish explores Japanese comfort food through fresh noodles topped with bean sprouts, egg, bamboo shoots and char siu.
“People have this perception that ramen is for college students on a dime, but the true interpretation of ramen is an artistic expression of broth and noodles,” Nam said. “It is a very important staple in Japanese cuisine, with a deeply rooted history and evolved process. Japanese chefs have great pride in their broth, as an artist would have pride in their work.”
For Cherry Blossom Noodle Café at Ninth Street and Camelback Road, ramen has held a place of honor on the menu since the shop evolved from a Japanese bakery to a full-service restaurant in 2002. Owners Chizuru and Charlie Ishida make magic in big bowls, with their “hakata” of sliced barbecue pork, green onion and kikurage mushroom ($6.85); the “takana” (hakata with pickled vegetable, $8); or miso soup with salmon ($8.60).
The ramen craze has even hit the chains. After testing ramen on its menu since last summer, Pei Wei Asian Diner has made its on-again, off-again chile beef soup a fixture Valley-wide.
The fusion-accented recipe combines egg noodles glazed in a soy-mirin-chile sauce, wok-seared vegetables and flank steak, topped with a sprinkling of cilantro and a spritz of lime. Non-beef eaters can get the $6.75 meal stocked with chicken or vegetables and tofu, or shrimp for a dollar extra.
Details: Republic Ramen, 1301 E. University Drive, Tempe, 480-388-3685, republicramen.com. Cherryblossom Noodle Café, 914 E. Camelback Road, Phoenix, 602-248-9090. cherryblossom-az.com. Geisha A Go Go, 7150 E. Sixth Ave., Scottsdale, 480-699-0055. geishaagogo.com. Pei Wei Asian Diner, locations Valley-wide at peiwei.com.
phoenix restaurants
restaurants phoenix az
scottsdale restaurants
tempe restaurants
chandler restaurants
restaurants glendale az
mesa restaurant
phoenix restaurant
downtown phoenix restaurants
restaurants in phoenix az
scottsdale arizona restaurants
scottsdale dining
true food kitchen
