Ramen – The Saboscrivner

Chain Reactions: JINYA Ramen Bar

JINYA Ramen Bar (https://www.jinyaramenbar.com/) was first founded in California by second-generation restauranteur Tomo Takahashi, after he had already opened a JINYA restaurant in Tokyo in 2000. There are multiple JINYA Ramen Bar locations around the United States, including two in the Orlando area — the first in Thornton Park near downtown Orlando, and the second just opened in Oviedo.

I had never been to the Thornton Park JINYA location, but always meant to try it after reading rave reviews and rhapsodic recommendations. When I heard one was opening closer to me, I was excited, and when co-owner Taff Liao invited me to a “friends and family” preview over Facebook, I was overjoyed.

I just got home from that lunch, where I ran into foodie-about-town and all-around good dude Ricky Ly, founder of the Tasty Chomps! food blog and the really terrific Orlando Foodie Forum Facebook group, arriving at the same time to dine with his family. It was a great experience, and I am here to tell you that JINYA Ramen Bar will be an asset to Oviedo and East Orlando. Don’t hesitate to check it out.

***Before continuing with my review, I must note that even though I fully expected to pay for my meal, I did not realize that the “friends and family” preview would be comped by the restaurant, like a dress rehearsal for the staff before its grand opening for the general public. I don’t get invited to stuff like that often, and I honestly would have felt more comfortable paying. Still, I was honored to be there, loved my meal, and left what I hope was a generous tip for the friendly staff. But in the spirit of full disclosure and candor for my constant readers, you stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, I was not charged for this wonderful lunch.***

The restaurant is on the ground floor of the Ellington apartment complex, one of the many new developments in Oviedo.

The dining room is a gorgeous, modern, dare I say sexy space with nice light fixtures, brick walls, that trendy and ubiquitous plant wall, and lots of natural light streaming in through floor-to-ceiling windows.

An open kitchen overlooks the dining room. There is an outdoor patio, but you will be inhaling exhaust from busy Mitchell Hammock Road if you sit out there, and it was already hot outside when I arrived just before noon, even in late October.

Being a solo diner, I sat at the bar, where two friendly female bartenders hustled, making gorgeous, artful cocktails while keeping my Sprite glass full. One of them patiently explained the menu in detail, and I did not have the heart to tell her I studied it in advance. The entire staff is warm and welcoming and well-trained during this soft opening, so expect excellence when you arrive in the days and weeks to come.

I started with an order of crispy rice with spicy tuna, from the Small Plates section of the menu. I have loved these at other Japanese restaurants, including the late, lamented Kabuto, which closed back in December. This order came with three small rectangular bricks of rice, coated in panko breadcrumbs and fried to light, crispy perfection. Each crispy rice brick was topped with a puree of mildly spicy tuna and tiny, cute jalapeno pepper slices.

I tried one plain, one dipped in the zingy seasoning sauce, and one dipped in the gyoza sauce (it ain’t just for gyoza anymore!), and no matter what I did, every bite was magnificent. I could see ordering these every time I return to JINYA Ramen Bar in the future, which will hopefully be often. In fact, if they ever decide to offer a larger order of ten or twelve, I would probably order that.

I could not go to JINYA Ramen Bar without ordering a bowl of ramen, even if it was unseasonably hot outside. JINYA makes its own ramen noodles from two different kinds of flour, then ages them in a special noodle-aging machine, which proves that we truly live in an age of technological marvels. I ordered JINYA’s version of my standard ramen order at any Japanese restaurant, tonkotsu ramen, which features a rich, creamy pork bone broth. Specifically, I got the JINYA Tonkotsu Black, with a slice of savory, fatty, tender pork chashu, green onion, two sheets of dried seaweed called nori, a seasoned soft-boiled egg with a perfect runny, creamy yolk, garlic chips, garlic oil, fried onion, and “spicy sauce.” It was served with thin noodles, but different bowls of ramen come with thicker noodles. I like ’em thicc, so I will try that next time.

It was masterful. All the ingredients harmonized so well. The broth was delicious enough to slurp even without anything else in it. It wasn’t spicy-hot, but it sure was temperature-hot, enough to make me sweat and blow my nose. The noodles had an ideal springy chew, and the nori sheets softened as soon as I dunked them into the steaming broth. It was one of the better versions of tonkotsu ramen I have enjoyed in Orlando, but different enough from mainstays like Oviedo’s underrated Ramen Takagi and Baldwin Park’s trendy Domu that you still must dare to compare.

I could have kept going, and in fact, I thought long and hard about topping off this luscious lunch with two salmon poke mini-tacos on crunchy rice “tortilla” wrappers. But when I found out I was being comped, I felt guilty taking advantage of the JINYA owners’ generosity and opted against ordering anything else. I will absolutely return — with my wife and with friends — as soon as I can. It is a straight shot east from our home, and if this was just a preview while the staff was training, I can’t imagine how much it will improve as everyone gets more experience, because it already felt like a well-oiled machine that had been operating for a while.

Thank you to Taff Liao for inviting me, and I’m sorry I did not get to meet you. I did get to chat briefly with Eric, another one of the owners, who was very friendly. Trust me, folks — you are in for a treat. Having not been to the Thornton Park JINYA Ramen Bar before, the new Oviedo location did not disappoint in any way. In fact, it is almost too cool for Oviedo and East Orlando, but here’s hoping everyone discovers it and enjoys it as much as I did.

Wa Sushi

Wa Sushi (https://www.facebook.com/WaSushiCasselberry/) is a real treasure in the Seminole County suburb of Casselberry, 20 minutes north of downtown Orlando. The small, serene location is located in a nondescript shopping plaza between an Ollie’s Bargain Outlet and a store called Sports & Pokemon (the two genders?), but it boasts some of the finest sushi and Japanese food in the Orlando area.

Wa Sushi used to be in another, even less auspicious location elsewhere in Casselberry, pretty far out of the way and hard to find, and our very cool next-door neighbors invited us there once. It was good, but for whatever reason, we didn’t return until recently — our first visit in years, and the first to this new location.

You can find Wa Sushi’s menu on the Facebook page above, but they had a menu of specials when I took my wife there recently, for our first real date night in a while:

This was one of the last evenings of 2022, and we saw Wa was offering another special of toshikoshi soba, or “year-crossing noodles,” traditionally meant to be eaten on New Year’s Eve to let go of the hardships of the past year (since soba noodles are so soft and easily cut). Well, we figured we could both use some of that.

Rather than try the version in broth, we ordered the toshikoshi ten zaru soba ($16), cold soba noodles served with a dashi soy dipping sauce and a side order of tempura-battered and fried shrimp and vegetables. It was beautifully plated, and really good too, although I probably would not have ordered it if the dish wasn’t associated with the tradition of letting go of the hard times of the past year.

Close-up of the tempura shrimp and vegetables. My wife ate the tempura sweet potato, and I had the onion and shishito peppers.

Here are the cold soba noodles, made from buckwheat and topped with some fine shreds of nori (seaweed). They didn’t have much flavor at all, kind of like eating plain, cold spaghetti, but earthier. The dashi dipping sauce helped immensely, as did the finely-diced scallions that also came on the side.

Something we ordered came with the obligatory wee house salad with sesame dressing and miso soup, which I enjoyed:

This was ika geso ($11), a small plate of deep-fried squid legs from the Hot Tasting section of the menu. After how tender and fried to perfection the shrimp were, we thought we would double down on the tempura shellfish. These were chewier than a lot of fried calamari we have ordered around town, but I have a feeling this squid was a lot fresher, as opposed to some restaurants that may use frozen calamari. They definitely tasted fresh.

My wife always loves a good selection of sashimi, or in this case, a beautiful portion of chirashi ($33) — select cuts of raw fish, selected by the chef. There was salmon in here, ebi (shrimp), tako (octopus, one of her favorites, whether raw or cooked), ikura (orange globes of salmon roe), tamago (perfectly cooked and sliced egg), and unagi (eel). I always love eel in sushi, but this was her first time trying it, and she liked it. I’m always impressed by her willingness to try almost anything.

And we ordered three beautiful rolls to share:

In the foreground, you can see the ultimate tuna roll ($16): spicy tuna and cucumber inside the rice, topped with tuna, wasabi-infused tobiko (fish eggs), and sweet chili sauce. This one was awesome, but I’m always a fan of spicy tuna in any form.

Here you can see the inferno roll ($14) in the front, and the mango tango roll ($13) in the back. In the very front are slices of escolar sashimi ($2.50), just for her — a big fan of the butterfish. The inferno roll features spicy salmon and cucumber topped with yellowtail, spicy mayo, and paper-thin slices of fresh jalapeño pepper. Awesome combination.
The mango tango roll in the back features tempura-battered and fried shrimp, mango, and cucumber, topped with crab salad. I believe this was real crabmeat and not surimi (processed fish sometimes called “krab,” even though I like that stuff too).

I was really impressed by Wa Sushi, once again, all these years later, in a much more convenient location. Last summer I wrote a review of Kabuto Sushi & Grill, another friendly neighborhood sushi spot close to our home, just on the Winter Springs side rather than the Casselberry side. I even listed one of Kabuto’s dishes in my Top Ten Tastes of 2022, which came out in the last Orlando Weekly issue of the year. Sadly, that very week, the last week of 2022, Kabuto announced it was closing permanently. That’s when I resolved to get us back to Wa, to support them as much as we could moving forward, to help spare it a similar fate. I know lots of local foodies already know how fine Wa Sushi is, and common consensus is that it is one of the best sushi establishments in the greater Orlando area. It absolutely is, and to have it so close to home, a true treasure in Casselberry, of all places, means we have to protect it, support it, and shout our praise from the rooftops, both real and virtual. So here’s my praise and my protection. Let’s support all of our favorite restaurants as much as we can this year, especially those friendly neighborhood favorites we are lucky to have so near and dear to us.

CLOSED: Kabuto Sushi & Grill

EDITOR’S NOTE: Kabuto Sushi & Grill announced it would be permanently closing after December 26th, 2022.

***

Kabuto Sushi & Grill (https://www.kabuto-sushi.com) is the closest sushi restaurant to our house, but it took us a while to try it. It used to be a different sushi restaurant years ago, which we only ever went to once. Once was enough. It was really expensive and just okay, but Kabuto has a completely different menu, different management, different décor, different everything. I ordered takeout, but the dining room was gorgeous — very modern and sexy, especially for a sushi restaurant in uber-suburban Winter Springs, next door to our regular Publix where everyone knows me.

I ordered takeout for that first visit to Kabuto, starting with a pretty typical eel roll ($10), with baked eel and cucumber inside the sushi rice and a little dipping cup of sticky, sweet eel sauce on the side:

My wife thought the Kabuto’s summer roll ($16) sounded interesting, with tuna, salmon, a krab stick, avocado, and mango, wrapped in spring mix leaves and rice paper, with house-made raspberry wine sauce on the side. It was an interesting combination, especially with the sauce, that was like a sweet and sticky vinaigrette dressing, and no rice to speak of.

I ended up using the sauce as dressing on a homemade salad a few days later, since she isn’t into sauces and dips anyway. It was perfectly fine, but I like my sushi rolls with rice, so I probably wouldn’t order this one again.

I’m glad I ordered a spicy tuna crunch roll and a spicy salmon crunch roll ($8 each; below left and center), both with tempura flakes inside to give them that gentle crunch, and we really enjoyed both of those.
But there were two highlights, even though these other rolls were solid. One was the mango passion roll that my wife chose ($16; on the right side in the above photo), with yellowtail, salmon, and avocado inside, topped with more yellowtail and salmon, plus mango salsa. It was AWESOME. What a great combination. I always order mango in my poke bowls with tuna and/or salmon when it is available, and it worked so well here.

My personal favorite wasn’t a roll at all, but a selection from the “cold small plates” part of the menu: spicy tuna crispy rice ($12), with cubes of deep-fried rice topped with spicy tuna, avocado, masago, scallions, sesame seeds, and a sweet glaze. It came with four pieces, which we split evenly, but I could have eaten two hundred of them, seriously.

I love ramen almost as much as I love sushi, but my wife doesn’t always share my love of ramen (aside from the instant stuff). I was surprised when she suggested we order a bowl of the tonkotsu ramen ($13) to split, since I figured she wouldn’t be interested, but I was half-considering ordering one just for myself. In the end, I liked it more than she did and ended up eating most of it, which was fine with me, but I was relieved she suggested it in the first place.

I really liked how rich and creamy the pork bone broth was, how tender the thin slices of chashu pork and bamboo shoots were, and how springy and chewy the noodles were. I always think I’m going to hate the bamboo in tonkotsu ramen, expecting it to be tough and fibrous like a cross between chewing on celery sticks and saxophone reeds, but it is more like al dente lasagna noodle sheets. The soft-boiled egg halves were cooked to gooey perfection as well, although I chomped them both rather than letting the yolks mix into the tonkotsu broth. The broth was served on the side in our takeout order, which was the ideal way to do it, to keep those great noodles from getting soggy.

I had no idea Kabuto also has a happy hour menu, since it wasn’t on the website. If you dine in between 4:30 and 7:00 PM, you could get much cheaper sushi rolls, and if I had known, we might have done that instead of ordering takeout. Here’s a photo, because the people need to know about this great deal!
In fact, we returned two weeks later to dine in and take advantage of happy hour, since the food was so good.

My wife started out with two pieces of escolar sashimi ($4) and two pieces of tako (octopus) sashimi ($4):

Then we went hard on those happy hour rolls! I got the same spicy tuna crunch roll and spicy salmon crunch roll we liked so much at home ($5 each; right center and bottom), as well as the full-priced mango passion roll we loved (top left):

We also got the Philly roll ($4; top right), the fire dragon roll ($5, bottom left), and the lobster sensation roll ($5, center). I always gravitate toward “Japanese bagel” rolls, with smoked salmon and cream cheese (the food of my people!), but the Philly roll was regular (non-smoked) salmon with cream cheese. Still very pleasing. This was my first fire dragon roll, with salmon, asparagus, and avocado inside, and topped with yellowtail, thin-sliced serrano peppers, and dollops of “house-made kobachi sauce,” as the menu said. It looked and tasted more like sriracha to me.

Finally, the lobster sensation roll isn’t listed on the regular menu, but it contained lobster mixed with cream cheese and was lightly fried in tempura batter. Really good stuff. I’m sorry I didn’t take more close-ups of this beautiful sushi tray.

There are also daily specials at Kabuto that we didn’t order, but I snapped a photo of the menu from the day we went, since they aren’t on the website either:

There is no shortage of good sushi restaurants in and around Orlando, but Kabuto Sushi & Grill is definitely the closest to us. It may not be super-upscale, but that isn’t The Saboscrivner’s style anyway, and it is still a really nice place with fresh, delicious, unpretentious sushi and ramen, tucked away in Winter Springs, where foodies rarely dare to venture. Please dare. In the meantime, we will keep enjoying this friendly neighborhood restaurant moments from our home.

Kombu Sushi Ramen

Sushi is one of my favorite foods, but I rarely eat it because you pay for quality, and that means decent sushi isn’t cheap, and next-level sushi is expensive. Plus, it takes so much sushi to fill me up, it isn’t a cost-effective meal for me (excluding my beloved all-you-can-eat Mikado in Altamonte Springs, which I still contend is one of the best bangs for your buck anywhere).

A few weeks ago, my wife and I agreed that sushi sounded good for dinner, and I asked her to choose one of three sushi restaurants near us to order takeout from: two we hadn’t been to, and one we hadn’t been to in a few years. She looked at all three menus online and chose one of the new ones that opened earlier this year, not far from us: Kombu Sushi Ramen (https://www.facebook.com/KombuSushiRamen/) on Aloma Avenue in a less-traveled part of Winter Park. We went a little bit nuts with ordering, but the sushi ended up being just what we dreamed of for far too long. (The last time I had sushi was earlier this year, while we both spent 30 days together in the hospital. That sushi was one of the best things I ate from the hospital cafeteria, but I was looking forward to something far better, in more pleasant surroundings.)

Kombu is in a little building that looks like a house, and it probably used to be a house a long time ago. Once I arrived, I only had to wait a few more minutes for my takeout order to be ready. The dining room was very nice, modern, and clean. It was busy on an early weekend evening, always a good sign. The sushi chefs were definitely hustling behind the sushi bar, and the hostess was kind enough to offer me a glass of water while I waited. It was a nice place I would like to see succeed.

Always health-conscious, my wife gravitates toward sashimi, thin slices of fresh, raw seafood without the usual rice, to avoid some carbs (or preferably, to save the carbs for dessert). She ordered this sashimi dinner ($24.95), with 20 assorted pieces of fresh fish and shellfish slices selected by the chef. This lovely arrangement included tuna, salmon, escolar (AKA white tuna or butterfish), surimi (AKA “krab,” white fish processed to look and taste like crab), and one of her favorite seafoods, tako (AKA octopus, at the 12:00 position). She really loves octopus, whether it is grilled, fried, or served like this (not raw but actually cooked; thanks to a sharp-eyed Saboscrivnerino for correcting me on this).

Below on the left, you can see my order of mackerel sashimi ($4.50 for the three shimmering silver pieces of fish). I always love saba (mackerel) because it tastes like pickled herring, with a little bit of sweetness and a light, vinegary tang. Next to that, in the back, is my wife’s extra escolar sashimi ($5 for the three white pieces), and our bagel roll ($5.95), a favorite of mine, with smoked salmon, cream cheese, and avocado.

Here are two more rolls we shared, a crunch roll ($5.50) and a crunchy spicy salmon roll ($6.95). The crunch roll (left) included krab, spicy mayo, avocado, and tempura “chips” on the top, and it is drizzled with kabayaki sauce, a sweet soy-based glaze, similar to eel sauce.
The crunchy spicy salmon roll (right) was a delicious blend of strong flavors and interesting textures, with spicy salmon, tempura chips on the inside, and drizzled with one of my favorite condiments (and not just for sushi, but especially for sushi), spicy mayo.

And this is one of my favorites anywhere, the volcano roll ($12.95). This majestic mountain was built around a sushi roll containing tuna and cream cheese, topped with avocado, “baked krab special,” tempura chips, spicy mayo, kabayaki sauce, and tobiko, the tiny, salty, delicate orange pearls that are flying fish roe. My wife liked this too, but I had been craving sushi for so long, it hit the spot so perfectly.

Here’s another angle of the volcano roll, so you can see the rolls themselves. All sushi is painstakingly prepared, with a lot of effort that goes into a beautiful presentation.

The artful presentation is part of the price of admission right there, but I thought the prices at Kombu were all very reasonable for the good quality of this sushi and sashimi. There are definitely fancier sushi places that are also more “authentic,” with less krab, less spicy mayo, fewer rolls in general. There’s a time and a place for those upscale and authentic restaurants, at least for some, but this is the kind of sushi I know the best and love the most. I’d consider Kombu more of an “everyday luxury,” and I mean that in the best possible way. It isn’t exclusive or precious or snooty — it’s wonderful, fresh food made with precision and care, that you can enjoy whenever you want to do something really nice for yourself. For me, believe it or not, that isn’t often enough.

Because Kombu has sushi and ramen in its title, I felt like I had to sample the ramen too, in order to write a worthy review. I defaulted to my old favorite, tonkotsu ramen, but chose the mayu tonkotsu ramen here ($13.50) and asked them to hold the kikurage, those skinny little alien-looking mushrooms. Note the noodles, two chashu pork slices, two ajitama egg halves, menma (AKA seasoned bamboo shoots), green onions, and lots of crunchy fried diced garlic. The fried garlic and black garlic oil are what makes the mayu tonkotsu different from the regular tonkotsu, which comes with shredded red ginger instead. As any restaurant packing up soup in a takeout order should, they packaged the tonkotsu broth in a separate container so the noodles wouldn’t get soggy on my way home.

Here is the mayu tonkotsu ramen with the broth added. It was delicious, because you can’t ever go wrong with tonkotsu ramen (unless of course you’re a vegetarian or strictly kosher or halal, due to the broth being made from pork bones simmering for days). My only issue with this takeout feast from Kombu is that the broth wasn’t the rich, creamy, opaque pork bone broth I’m used to from tonkotsu ramen. This was more of a watery broth than I was expecting. It was still tasty, salty, and porky, but not thick or creamy like I’ve gotten spoiled by.

So that’s my long-overdue review of Kombu Sushi Ramen. I would happily return anytime for the sushi, but for ramen, tonkotsu or otherwise, I would probably sooner return to Ramen Takagi, just five minutes east on Aloma, still my favorite ramen spot. Hey, that would be a great double feature dinner right there!

Grocery Grails: Sun Noodle fresh ramen kits

Everyone loves ramen, right? I sure do. I never even tried ramen noodles until I moved away to go to college, and then they were de rigeur dorm food — bricks of fried noodles that came with seasoning packets (mostly salt and MSG) that you could turn into soup with just a pot of water boiled on an illegal hot plate. Best of all, when we were poor all the time, you could get six or seven packages of this instant ramen in a multitude of flavors for a buck. I quickly learned I liked my ramen best after draining the water and mixing the seasoning directly into the noodles themselves, like eating very salty flavored pasta. When my old band spent our freshman year Spring Break touring Florida for a week, we brought bread, peanut butter, and bricks of instant ramen, which we ate uncooked, just crunching away at them in random parking lots. All of this was extremely unhealthy, but ramen helped get me through three degrees, especially when paired with proteins like canned tuna or sardines, or sometimes chicken or sausage if I was feeling flush.

I wouldn’t discovery the glory and grandeur of “real,” authentic Japanese ramen until my 30s, when I was a little shocked over spending $10 or more for a bowl of the good stuff. But it was so good, and I wondered where this real ramen had been all my life. I tried a few and quickly realized tonkotsu ramen was my favorite, a creamy pork bone broth served with a slice of fatty roast chashu pork. So delicious, and streets ahead of the cheap stuff that sustained me for so long. I’ve had particularly lovely tonkotsu ramen at Ramen Takagi, Susuru, and Domu here in Orlando, and those are links to my reviews. The tonkotsu at Ramen Takagi even made my Top Ten Tastes of 2020 in Orlando Weekly!

But sometimes you just want to make ramen at home for a nostalgic night in. Orlando is blessed with a huge number of Asian markets, some of which are as huge as any Publix supermarket, and all of which feature a selection of ramen and other noodles that put Publix to shame. And they aren’t all the fried dry bricks either — many brands offer fresh and frozen noodles that can be cooked just as easily, except the texture, taste, and quality are so much better. Well, constant readers, I might have discovered the best store-bought ramen of all, so I had to share in another Grocery Grails feature.

The brand is Sun Noodle. Based in Hawaii and founded by Hidehito Uki in 1981, Sun Noodle furnishes many of the best ramen restaurants in the U.S. with its fresh, springy noodles. Seriously, if you don’t believe me, check out these features on Eater and Serious Eats and in Honolulu Magazine. In recent years, Sun Noodle started producing ramen kits for home cooks to make fast, easy, restaurant-quality ramen with their fresh noodles and rich, flavorful concentrated soup bases that are a great leap forward from the salty powder packets we all know.

I recently found all three Sun Noodle ramen kits at Enson Market, formerly known as 1st Oriental Market, at 5132 West Colonial Drive in the Pine Hills neighborhood west of downtown Orlando, full of Asian restaurants, markets, and other businesses. I found all three varieties in the cooler and bought them all: tonkotsu, shoyu, and miso ramen kits. Each one comes with two servings. Keep in mind these are perishable, so eat them or stick them in the freezer so they don’t go bad, which would be a damn shame.

Of course I had to start with the tonkotsu, my favorite:

The back of each package includes cooking directions, nutrition information, and ingredients. Note that this tonkotsu soup base contains pork extract, lard, and chicken powder, so it is definitely not for vegetarians!

Each package includes two separate portions, with individually wrapped noodles and soup base packets. The concentrated tonkotsu base was a thick, sticky paste the color of butterscotch pudding. Let me save you the trouble — don’t bother tasting it. You probably won’t like it, at least not until you mix it with hot water and stir well to create the creamy tonkotsu broth you were hoping for.

Here is my tonkotsu ramen, which I served with some corn and a piece of Filipino pork adobo, the only pork I had on hand. It was great! Definitely not as good as Ramen Takagi and the other aforementioned restaurants, because they make their broth from scratch and include house-made chashu pork and other fine ingredients. Cobbled together from a ramen kit, a can of corn, and a hunk of leftover pork that wasn’t even from a Japanese recipe, it was still some damn fine ramen, and far better than any instant ramen I’ve tried before. The rich, creamy broth was better than I could have imagined, made with that paste instead of a powdered seasoning blend.

A week or so passed, and I decided to bust out the shoyu ramen, which is soy sauce-flavored.

Nutrition info and ingredients. This one includes dried sardine extract powder, so vegetarians, stay away.

How everything looks before cooking. Note the shoyu ramen noodles are more of a rich golden color than the paler noodles that came in the tonkotsu kit above.

And here’s the prepared soup, with more corn and some crunchy fried onions. They’re not just for Thanksgiving green bean casserole anymore! I think I liked these noodles better, but I definitely prefer the rich, porky flavor of the tonkotsu broth to the almost overwhelming saltiness of the shoyu broth. And yet, it was still better than any instant ramen I’ve ever tried.

Most recently, I made the miso ramen, which is soybean paste-flavored. Now, I’ve had miso soup at Japanese restaurants before, but only when it came with something else I ordered. I must admit I never get too excited about it, because it never tastes like much to me. I’ve never really sought out tofu or other soy-based meat substitutes, and it certainly never occurred to me to order miso ramen at any restaurants when tonkotsu was an option. But I tried it for you, constant readers, for the sake of SCIENCE and JOURNALISM! I may never be the kind of “influencer” food blogger that gets invited to free meals and fancy events, but I will definitely keeping reporting on the best local restaurants and the most interesting groceries you can find at local markets.

Anyway, here are the nutrition info and ingredients for the miso ramen. Yes, it is vegetarian-friendly!

The fresh noodles and soup base packet. This one was also a thick paste that I poured the hot water from the noodles into and stirred.

And here is my miso ramen, with (surprise!) more corn, more crunchy fried onions that didn’t stay crunchy for long. I decorated this bowl with black sesame seeds, and that cherry on top is actually a bulb of black garlic, with a very complex and surprisingly sweet flavor, and a chewy consistency like gummy candy.

Interestingly, this was the most complex flavor of all. Having never tried miso ramen before, I can barely even describe it, but there was a lot going on — all of it good.

I strongly recommend these to anyone curious, and I would definitely buy them again to keep in the freezer for when I crave ramen. This happens a lot, by the way. I’m sure there are other great ramen brands to make at home, but Sun Noodle is kind of a big deal. I was thrilled to discover these existed, and then to find them locally. Have you tried these? Is there another variety of ramen you recommend, either a brand, a flavor, or both? Your friendly neighborhood Sabsoscrivner is always on the lookout for gustatory glory with Grocery Grails.

CLOSED: BaanChan Thai Restaurant

EDITOR’S NOTE: BaanChan Thai Restaurant closed permanently over the summer of 2022.

***

I had been hearing about BaanChan Thai Restaurant (https://www.baanchanorlando.com/) for years before finally making it there in December. I brought back takeout for my “lunch bunch” at work, and everyone really enjoyed what they ordered. It’s way out east on Colonial Drive, further east than I usually venture, almost out to Alafaya. But it is easily accessible via the 417 and convenient for anyone in the UCF area.

My one co-worker ordered the BaanChan ramen ($10), with noodles in a spicy lemongrass soup, mushrooms, onions, scallions, cilantro, whole chiles, and lime. It came with a soy-marinated soft boiled egg and several large deep-fried, breaded shrimp. This was a a uniquely Thai take on ramen. They wisely packed the broth, the fried shrimp, and all the other stuff in three separate containers for her. My photo of the broth came out blurry, so I left it out. You’re welcome!

Three of us ordered my go-to Thai dish, drunken noodles ($8.50), at various levels of heat. Because I like to tempt fate and sometimes ruin my afternoons at the workplace, I asked for mine to be hot. Drunken noodles, sometimes called pad kee mow or pad kee mao, are wide, flat noodles stir-fried to an al dente consistency in a spicy sauce with onions, bell peppers, and Thai basil, plus a protein. I chose pork, which was tender and not dried out from the stir-frying. These were much more oily than other drunken noodles I’ve ordered elsewhere, at places like Mee Thai, Naradeva Thai, and Thai Singha, but still had a lot of flavor and A LOT of heat.

Someone’s food came with fluffy jasmine rice, but it went unclaimed. That was a relief to me, because I ate it to cut some of the lingering heat from the spicy, oleaginous noodles. Sometimes carbs can save your life!

I also ordered two small appetizers for myself, so I could make everything last for lunch and dinner. I asked around, and a lot of people recommended the Thai heaven beef ($4.50), which is fried beef jerky! Because it was fried and not just cured like a lot of conventional jerky I’ve had, in addition to being sticky, sweet, salty, and slightly spicy, it was oily and also quite firm and crunchy, which I wasn’t expecting. I can see why this is a popular crowd-pleaser at BaanChan, but I don’t know if I would order it again.

My absolute favorite thing I tried on this first visit to BaanChan was the Thai sausage ($4). It was chewy and savory with a slightly crispy exterior, not spicy at all. It was a terrific sausage, and I loved it. It came with paper-thin slices of pickled ginger like you might get with sushi, and some intimidating-looking whole chiles that I wisely avoided.

You can also see a fried pot sticker that one of my co-workers gave me from her order ($4.50 for four). It was stuffed with ground, seasoned pork and vegetables and was a pretty standard pot sticker, but you can never go wrong with those.

I was glad to finally try BaanChan after reading about it for years. Whenever I make it back, I’ll definitely order that amazing sausage again, and I’ll probably try the pineapple fried rice, chili jam, or larb next time to switch things up.

Orlando Weekly published my Top Ten Tastes of 2020!

I am honored to have one of my end-of-the-year lists included in our wonderful local alt-weekly newspaper, Orlando Weekly, for the FOURTH year in a row. This piece, my Top Ten Tastes of 2020, didn’t make it into the print edition, but it is a blog piece on their website for all to see.

https://www.orlandoweekly.com/orlando/top-tastes-2020-the-10-best-dishes-we-tried-in-orlando-this-year/Content?oid=28559241

Here’s a link to my 2017, 2018, and 2019 Orlando Weekly lists.

Happy New Year to all of my dozens of readers! Stay warm, healthy, and safe in 2021. Don’t forget to eat something good — because you deserve it, and because these local restaurants could use all the help they can get.

Ramen Takagi

There are some foods I crave literally all of the time. Loaded Italian subs. Turkish lahmacun. Nova salmon. Jamaican oxtails. Hot pastrami with grilled onions and good mustard. Prosciutto. Oysters. Auntie Anne’s pretzels. (Sorry, not sorry!) Obviously I don’t eat them all the time because I don’t want to die, but I sure do love them. And another one on this list is tonkotsu ramen, springy noodles and fat-marbled chashu pork slices in a gloriously rich and creamy pork bone broth. There are other kinds of ramen that are all worthy of love, but for me, tonkotsu is the bowl that rules them all.

There are a few restaurants to get a delicious bowl of ramen around Orlando, and I’ve reviewed a few of them: Susuru down near Disney Springs, Domu in the East End Market in Orlando’s hip Audubon Park neighborhood, Kai Asian Street Fare on the edge of Casselberry and Winter Park, Jade Sushi & New Asian in College Park near downtown Orlando.

But this past week, a brand-new restaurant specializing in ramen opened on Aloma Avenue in Oviedo, between Tuskawilla Road and the 417, placing it very close to Winter Springs, Casselberry, and Winter Park, and ten minutes from our home. The place is Ramen Takagi (https://ramentakagi.com/), and I’ve been waiting months for it to finally open. (It is open every day except Tuesdays!) When I arrived, I was the only customer, but three staff members were chatting inside. I was pleased to see they were all wearing masks, even though they were alone in their restaurant, and they were warm and friendly when I got there and introduced myself. After visiting tonight for the first time, I was so glad to welcome them to the neighborhood, and I promised these new neighbors they would be seeing a lot more of me.

This is the tonkotsu ramen ($13), with the sliced chashu pork, ajitamago (a marinated, soft-boiled egg), pickled ginger, and scallions over a generous portion of perfectly-cooked noodles. Even before adding the broth, it was beautiful.

This is the rich, creamy pork bone broth, which had already started separating in the ten minutes it took me to drive home, but a quick stir melded everything back together. I appreciated it so much that they packed the broth separately.

Here’s the beautiful bowl with the broth stirred up and poured in over everything. I loved it so very much. Is it my favorite tonkotsu ramen in Orlando? It was one of those meals that was so good, my eyes rolled back into my head. It’s a heck of a lot more convenient than Domu (which has the excellent Richie Rich tonkotsu I reviewed earlier this year, pre-pandemic), and so much closer than Susuru, which I liked a lot, but it’s an hour from our door. So for multiple reasons, it might be my new favorite. It might become your new favorite too.

I couldn’t resist trying the mazesoba ($11), an order of savory ground pork with diced chashu, another ajitamago egg, strips of nori seaweed, and scallions over noodles. This is a brothless ramen dish, and it was still tasty, but the tonkotsu broth was so good, it was hard for the mazesoba to measure up. In the near future, I will try all the other forms of ramen at Ramen Takagi: shio (chicken bone broth with a salt base), shoyu (chicken bone broth with a soy base), and miso (pork and chicken blended broth, which can be ordered spicy or non-spicy).

This was kaedama, literally translated to an extra order of noodles, which were a very reasonable $1.50. I had considered adding them to any leftover tonkotsu broth, but instead my wife really enjoyed them with just a small splash of the broth.

These are onigiri, tasty triangles of seafood wrapped in sushi rice and wrapped again in delicious nori, the same thin sheets of crispy seaweed used for sushi rolls. I liked how these came wrapped in cellophane with a red stripe down the center that you pull to tear it open, and then release the cellophane from the sides.

I chose the tuna with mayo (left, $2.50) and the smoked salmon (right, $3). For the tuna with mayo, I was really expecting raw or seared ahi tuna, rich and purple, hopefully adorned with the orange spicy mayo I love so much with sushi, poke, and pretty much everything. I was surprised it was more like tuna salad. It wasn’t bad, just not at all what I expected. I liked the smoked salmon more, but even it was flakes of smoked salmon instead of… I don’t know if I expected thin slices of nova or belly lox or what. Still, as always, I’m so glad I tried them.

As I said, Ramen Takagi just opened a week ago, after the sign had been up for several months. I was starting to worry the restaurant might end up another casualty of 2020, and they might never open their doors at all. But they’re here, and they’re already off to a bang-up start. I was extremely impressed by their mask protocol, being alone in the shop without the prying eyes of concerned customers, and they had their masks on, taking things seriously before they could have possibly seen me approach. And I was just as impressed by the quality of my takeout food.

I’m so glad to have another great restaurant near our home, along with a much closer and quicker source for one of my favorite dishes, tonkotsu ramen. When I was in college, eating instant Nissin noodles that cost a buck for seven salty single servings, I never would have dreamed that over 20 years later, I’d have a wonderful wife, make an okay living, write a food blog that a handful of people actually read, or pay $13 for a bowl of delicious, beautiful, fresh ramen without thinking twice about it. It makes me feel very lucky to be where I am, doing what I’m doing, and eating what I’m eating. I intend to become a regular at Ramen Takagi, and I encourage my dozens of readers to do the same!

Ms Tea’s Bento

This week I ordered takeout for myself and two co-workers from a relatively new Taiwanese restaurant for the first time, after seeing some photos of the food on The Orlando Foodie Forum presented by Tasty Chomps, the main reason I haven’t deleted my Facebook account. Ms Tea’s Bento (https://msteasbento.business.site/) opened last year, then closed for six months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and only recently reopened at the beginning of September. The restaurant and teahouse is located in a shopping plaza on East Colonial Drive between Dean and Rouse Roads, easily accessible via the 417 or 408 and not far from busy Alafaya Trail.

It’s a cute little cafe, very warm and welcoming with simple decor (lots of tea, lots of cats), and I was welcomed by the sweetest woman who had my order all ready when I showed up. They have a menu on the website, but I thought it would be convenient for my readers to scan and share the menu here:

I mentioned it was my first time in, and I was so excited to try everything. The lady offered to make me a tea drink for free, because it was my first visit, which was so sweet and generous. I was almost ready to get a black milk tea, but I saw they had a sign in the window offering Yakult beverages, made with a popular Japanese probiotic drink, similar to sweet, thin yogurt with a subtle citrus taste. I asked about the Yakult, and she ended up making me a beautiful pink iced hibiscus tea drink with Yakult added to it, the way you would normally add milk. It was really light, sweet, and refreshing.

I also picked up an iced coffee for my co-worker ($3.75), which was shaken up with some sweetened condensed milk, like Vietnamese cà phê sữa đá. It looked and smelled delicious, and she seemed to love it. My longtime readers know I’m not a big coffee drinker, but I do make an exception for Vietnamese iced coffee.

So this is the chicken teriyaki bento box my one co-worker ordered, with steamed rice and vegetables ($9.50). I appreciated that all the meals came in recyclable, dishwasher-safe, microwave-safe plastic containers with lids that snap into place. That’s always nice to see, especially because I clean and reuse all those kinds of containers. Those are so much better than styrofoam or those flimsy, fragile folded paper takeout boxes.

My other co-worker loves takoyaki, crispy fried fritters made with octopus, a popular Japanese street food. She wanted to try Ms. Tea’s takoyaki ($5.99), and seemed to really like them. I believe they came garnished with thin bonito (fish) flakes and Japanese mayo.

I couldn’t decide between two dishes, and she was also interested in one of the two I wanted, so I suggested we split one of them, knowing her takoyaki wouldn’t be a large order. We split the spicy pork dry noodles ($8.95), which were nice, thick udon-like noodles with ground pork and julienned cucumber, very similar to dan dan noodles I’ve enjoyed before at Chuan Lu Garden. It also came topped with an egg fried to a perfect over-medium with a runny yolk that added richness, and fresh cilantro.

The other dish I wanted to try was the pork stew rice bowl ($7.50), which included braised pork belly in a rich brown sauce over steamed white rice, with still-crispy celery sticks, some tangy diced preserved vegetables (near the top), and half of a “tea boiled egg,” which was one of the things that drew me to try this dish. I think those lighter diced cubes at the bottom were fried tofu, which I definitely wasn’t expecting, but I could be wrong., since I almost never eat tofu. Saboscrivnerinos, please weigh in and set me right!

Finally, I couldn’t resist trying the sweet butter/condensed milk toast ($4.25), which sounded like a rich, delightful dessert. I love buttered toast, from Waffle House breakfasts to every kind of garlic bread with barbecue or Italian food. And I love sweetened condensed milk with anything, from coffee to fruit to Cuban tres leches. To me, plain ol’ sweetened condensed milk is a more satisfying dessert than many kinds of cookies, cakes, and ice cream!

I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but it ended up being ONE large, thick slice of bread, very lightly toasted, and soaked with butter and condensed milk. I didn’t share this one, even though I realized about halfway through that it was scored into several smaller squares to be easily divided and shared. I ordered it for myself, so I had no compunction about enjoying it all myself.

I enjoyed everything I tasted on my first trip to Ms. Tea’s Bento, and I definitely plan to return and try more dishes and drinks. It’s one of Orlando’s hidden gems in that sun-baked industrial stretch of East Colonial Drive between the 417 and Alafaya, and it’s easy to miss. But when the sun is beating down and you want pull over for a cold, tasty beverage, or you’re hungry for something unfussy and possibly unfamiliar, it’s one more delicious destination in East Orlando and a casual, affordable alternative to the chain restaurants that proliferate out around UCF and Waterford Lakes.

CLOSED: Mei’s Kitchen

EDITOR’S NOTE: Mei’s Kitchen permanently closed in July 2023.

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Mei’s Kitchen (https://www.meiskitchenorlando.com/) is a brand-new Taiwanese restaurant that opened less than a month ago in East Orlando, in the Publix plaza on University Drive and Dean Road, right off State Road 417. It is two doors down from another restaurant I discovered and reviewed this year, Mark’s Jamaican Bar & Grill. So if you ever can’t decide between Jamaican and Taiwanese food (a situation that most people may never find themselves in, but I have a feeling I will often), this is the place to go.

As usual, friends on The Orlando Foodie Forum presented by Tasty Chomps on Facebook were even quicker to discover Mei’s Kitchen, and have been posting tantalizing photos and singing its praises for the last two or three weeks. I have been wanting to make it over there, and finally made it on Memorial Day, a rare Monday off work. I called in our takeout order as I was leaving the house, hopped on the 417, stopped into Publix for a few groceries, and my order was ready and bagged up when I got to Mei’s, about 20 minutes after making the call.

It’s a large and beautiful dining room in the unassuming shopping center, which they spent months completely refurbishing after the previous tenant, Chinese restaurant Pu Yi, closed. Sadly, the dining room was empty, but I was there before 5:00 PM on a Monday, Mei’s is still less than a month old and doesn’t seem to have much word of mouth yet, and of course there are COVID-19 concerns. I don’t plan to resume dining in restaurants anytime soon, but I’m still happy to order takeout to support locally-owned establishments, and I tip like I’m taking up one of their tables. And now for the word of mouth — I’m here to tell you that the food was terrific and a terrific bargain, and they could really use your business.

I had been dying to try the Taiwanese beef noodle soup ($10.95), and it ended up being one of the most delicious and satisfying noodle soups I’ve ever had. I was grateful they packed the broth (with beef) and the noodles (with finely-chopped cilantro and what I believe are pickled mustard greens) separately, so the noodles didn’t become a soggy, gloopy mess on my drive home.

I poured some of the broth and all of the beef into the noodle container with enough room to mix it around, and I still had lots of broth left over (which I’ll add my own noodles to). The beef was very tender, and I’m pretty sure it was brisket — one of my favorite cuts of beef.

It was so satisfying, and not nearly as salty as I expected. I’ve had countless bowls of pho, and I’ve finally started wading into the world of “fancy” (non-instant) ramen, but nothing could have prepared me for the perfection of Taiwanese beef noodle soup. Of course, as a librarian and a nerd, I had to research it further, and I found this Grub Street article that lists the best Taiwanese beef noodle soup locations in New York, with more background about the ingredients and cooking processes that make it so unique and special. The article says “[m]any consider it to be the national dish of Taiwan,” and I can see why!

The Taiwanese sausage fried rice ($7.95) wasn’t that different from other fried rice dishes I’ve enjoyed in the past, but its hard to go wrong with fried rice. I love lap cheong (AKA lạp xưởng in Vietnamese), dried Chinese pork sausage that is chewy and slightly sweet. It is one of my favorite ingredients in fried rice, and one that doesn’t get included often enough. This version of the dish wasn’t overly greasy or salty, and the rice had a nice chewiness to it. It was loaded with scrambled eggs, peas, and diced onion and carrot, in addition to the sausage.

We ordered so much food, I put the fried rice away after a tiny taste, only to devour it the following day after stirring in a little Lao Gan Ma Spicy Chili Crisp, a versatile Szechuan condiment you can find any any Asian market. But here it is, pre-spicy chili crisping:

I hadn’t had softshell crabs in a long time, so I was happy to see a salt and pepper soft shell crab appetizer on the menu — two crispy fried crabs for $7.95. They were both bisected down the middle and came with a generous helping of delicious spicy mayo, which I love on sushi (and almost anything else) way more than I should. These weren’t greasy either, which is always a nice surprise.

Here’s a close-up of the fried crabs. I really appreciated that Mei’s uses those plastic takeout containers with plastic lids that snap into place. They are recyclable and dishwasher-safe, so we always clean and save these. They are perfect for food storage beyond their original use.

But wait, we aren’t done yet! My wife usually likes fluffy bao buns, so we ordered all three varieties of bao for her, not even realizing Mei’s Kitchen includes two bao in each order! We were expecting one of each kind of bao, so that was a nice surprise.

So we got traditional gua bao with braised pork belly, garnished with fresh cilantro, pickled mustard greens, and crushed roasted peanuts ($2.95 for two):

Fried pork belly bao with shredded cucumber and sesame seed dressing ($3.50 for two):

And fried shrimp bao with avocado and more of that spicy mayo ($3.95 for two):

As you can see, the bao came in regular styrofoam boxes.

It was a quite a feast that yielded plenty of leftovers, and this was actually our first time having Taiwanese food. If you like Chinese, you’ll love Taiwanese! I wish Mei’s Kitchen well. Most of Orlando’s best Chinese restaurants are all the way out on Colonial Drive (Peter’s Kitchen, Taste of Chengdu, Chuan Lu Garden), so this is somewhat closer to home. The food is excellent, the portions are generous, the dining room is new and nice, and the prices are extremely reasonable, so here’s that word of mouth Mei’s could definitely use. Give them a chance, and you won’t be sorry. I’d definitely recommend everything we tried, and they have a whole lot more to choose from as well.