Noodle in a Haystack Is the Most Interesting Ramen Restaurant in America | Bon Appétit
"Founded by Clint and Yoko Tan after a turning-point run as the only U.S.-based finalists at the 2017 World Ramen Grand Prix, this San Francisco restaurant offers a hushed, eight-course tasting menu that unpacks ramen into a series of concentrated, standalone dishes before culminating in a single, seasonally rotating bowl. Dishes orbit the idea of ramen—examples include a savory financier finished with smoky shoyu crème fraîche and caviar as an amuse-bouche, a carbonara-like abura soba with a soy-cured yolk, and a delicate Deviled Ramen Egg topped with chicken cracklings and gyofun—while the final shio butter clam ramen features a Manila and blue clam dashi enriched with fried clam, chicken and garlic bagna cauda, a dried seafood tare, chicken schmaltz, and toppings like a soy-marinated Hokkaido scallop, compound kombu-nori butter, and chashu slowly smoked on binchotan. Critics and peers praise the thoughtful, craft-driven approach—calling it a reconfiguration of ramen that teases out umami and the dish’s component textures and flavors—and Bon Appétit named it one of its 24 Best New Restaurants of 2023. The chefs describe their philosophy as coaxing and layering umami, and they measure success by a simple test: would they, and their diners, want to eat the dish again?" - BySam Stone
