Noodle in a Haystack

2020 was incredibly challenging for us, but today we FINALLY have some huge news to share with you all! Please pray for us, we're about to be elbows deep in SF permitting purgatory!!!

We were featured in a HUGE piece on TV Asashi for one of Japan’s biggest evening news program, Hodo Station!!! They followed us around for the whole competition but we had no idea this much would actually air. Check it out to see a bit of how the World Ramen Grand Prix went down (apologies it’s only in Japanese)

For anyone who’s had our ramen in the last few months, we’ve upgraded and have been using Keizo’s special custom made noodles which he’s been supplying us with all the way from NY. He needs our help to stay afloat during these turbulent times. It pains us to see our colleagues in this industry who care so much about the craft struggle. We’re rooting for you Keizo!! Hoping you come out on top, so we’ll be able to continue to share your amazing noodles with everyone in the B...ay Area. https://www.gofundme.com/f/ramen-shack-burger-shimamoto-noo

Great to be mentioned in today’s The Six Fifty article and featured on the cover photo!! What a coincidence too, because we’re planning to bring back the Madai (Japanese Sea Bream) Shio ramen in April!!

Great pleasure having the City Foodsters in a few weeks ago!! We’ve been lucky enough to cook the Shio ramen for them multiple times throughout the years and it’s always surreal to look back and remember how much it and the rest of the food has evolved!!

We were selected by the San Francisco Chronicle’s restaurant critic, Soleil Ho, as her BEST meal of the Year!!!!! Yoko and I are still in shock and humbled by this completely unexpected honor and just can’t wait to see what 2020 has in store

Might be the best version of our Shio yet with these new amazing silky whole wheat flecked noodles custom made for us by Shimamoto Noodle Inc.

This might be our best Shio yet with amazing silky new wonton skins and noodles custom made for us by Shimamoto Noodle Inc.

She first dined with us almost 3 years ago when we were still popping up around the city, and has been diligently following us. We finally were able to cook for her again recently and reading these amazing comments is truly one of the best parts of doing what we do!

So much gelatin extracted through simmering for over 24 hours. This is the beef stock refrigerated overnight

Some of the ingredients that are going into the ridiculous ramen special for this month: Masami Farms Wagyu Oxtail, Beef neckbones, knuckle, tendon, A5 Hokkaido & Imperial Wagyu

Ramen is undoubtedly the centerpiece of our meals, but we don’t spend nearly enough time highlighting everything else you get to enjoy leading up to it which is definitely one of the most unique aspects of our meals. Here’s a beautiful collage taken by one of our guests last weekend for the monthly mystery flavor event where we ended serving a new revamped 2 day slow simmered tori paitan. Every non-ramen course we serve contains the same amount of TLC that we pour into our ramen. Like I always say, we only want to make things that we truly love eating ourselves!

Had my fav bowl of ramen sketched by the talented @danbransfield - incredible how he managed to freehand this on an iPad!! Huge thanks to @charleschen66 @correctlyseasoned @patriciajlu @kingaring for all the help with letting us live our little dream of opening up a tiny 6 seat shop in SF for a few hours at a special private event

Shio Butter Clam, our July special! With compound konbu butter, Hokkigai, melted allium konbu oil, roasted garlic schmaltz, shio tare, roasted summer corn, clam dashi cut with 30% whole chicken chintan. This was a refined version of our attempt 2 years ago & light-years ahead of a disappointing top-rated clam ramen we had in Tokyo last month. It’s been extremely tough for us to source consistently good clams and even with in-season Manila clams, this required numerous adjus...tments to reach the flavor we had in mind. Equal parts Manila clam & Pi Water to make the stock, but still lacked depth and natural sweetness, so we ended up turning the spent clams into a mousse to fortify the broth and shabu-shabu’d close to a 1 lb of sashimi grade Hokkigai surf clam from Hokkaido in the stock before service. That gave it the pure sweet shellfish umami we were after! See more

Shio de Poisson 2.0, Japanese Madai Sea Bream Shio ramen. A cumulative week+ worth of prep went into this bowl. 3 days for cleaning, curing, filtering, & roasting the fish for the soup base. 7 days for the chashu that was best version we’ve ever made. It’s like a blend of bacon, roast pork, and ham with a tender wagyu like melt-in-your-mouth texture. Not to mention all the stuff in between: the tare, the melted allium-konbu oil, roasted garlic scallion schmaltz, ramen egg, roasted and hand deboned Hokkaido mackerel flake, aged onions... Eat Freakz for the from our last event on Saturday.

Because of the way we serve our unique coursed ramen meals, we can do things that you won’t see at other ramen shops! This week, we’re tweaking the way we do the pork shoulder chashu. Excited to see how it turns out! Here’s the plan:... -Dry cured for 2 days -Sous vide for 15 hours -Fire roasted -Marinated for 3 days See more