Montreal’s ramen scene has gone from relatively non-existent to booming. There’s no denying that in recent years we’ve been spoiled at the variety of ramen houses available to us. Not only do we now have places to grub on some awesome Japanese soup noodles, but some of these places specialize in regional specific bowls that originate from different parts of Japan. Downtown is ramen-central with five different spots in a three block radius. I recently checked out one of the news places in town for a hot bowl of delicious noodles, Ichifuku Ramen.
Tag:
Noodles
On my never-ending quest to find Montreal’s best Pad Thai, I found myself at this place in Ville St-Laurent called Sawadika. Ever since my favourite Thai restaurant closed a while back, it left a Pad Thai void in the city – every Thai restaurant that I’ve been to (so far) has failed in comparison. To perfect the combination of flavours and tastes to tantalize all areas of the palate isn’t easy. The mastery of the taming of ingredients and having them succumb to the will of a fiery hot wok isn’t a skill every chef possesses and it was very evident when I had lunch here.
I used to think that it was ludicrous to eat soup noodles in summer, but with more and more noodle houses popping up in Montreal I think I’m going to have to abandon this ridiculous way of thinking. I just couldn’t imagine slurping copious amounts of hot noodles in steamy broth when the mercury inches above 20 degrees when I already have sweat management problems. I guess I can say my narrow-mindedness changed when I spent some time in South-East Asia where downing road-side bowls of hot noodles at the butt-crack of dawn where the temperature was already 30 degrees and a notion of “humidex” didn’t exist because it was always at 100%. So as spring kicks into high gear and air is still crisp, I checked out Nouilles de Lan Zhou in Chinatown for some homemade hand-pulled noodles.