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Rai Rai Ken and human behavior
The other day my friend Jonathan said, "Your diet consists of burgers and desserts." Not true. I also eat ramen. Just think about, what other food groups are there? And just because my breakfast consists of hersey's kisses, hot chocolate, and an orange, it does not mean that I have a limited diet. Someone once said, "Live as though you will die tomorrow, learn as if you will live forever." My diet simply reflects the first part of the quote. See, I am smrt. S-M-R-T. Now gimme a gold star. Oh yea so I went to Rai Rai Ken last week.
Rai Rai Ken is this little hole in the wall on tenth street in the East Village. If you are not on the lookout for it, you might miss it because you would be walking down tenth and be like, "Oh clothing store, regular apartment, regular apartment, clothing store, regular apartment, clothing store, oh wait, that is not a clothing store because people are slurping ramen in there." The shop probably seats fifteen patrons at most and they have a straight forward menu featuring three different types of broth for the ramen: Shio, Shoyu, and Miso.
After reading about Setagaya ramen on Tina's site, I finally learned that those thin slices of brown stuff is a root. Shinachiku root. See, that is why I love the internet, you can watch youtube videos on a blog and learn these things. They did not teach me anything remotely that cool at NYU. pssssh. College edumacation. More gold stars please.
My friend Patrick said the Shio ramen is kind of bland, and that he prefers Sapporo instead. That or he should have tried the miso or shoyu broth instead. I got the shoyu ramen and overall it was a good bowl of ramen. The broth was had a nice balance of flavor and was not overpowering in soy sauce flavor. Ingredients offered no inspiration although they were quite adequate and hit the spot. And the ramen was toothsome enough and cooked properly. I prefer the Menchanko Tei noodles slightly more, but not by much. Now I just have to revisit Setagaya and Momofuku again.
And after dinner we met up with more friends and talked and we eventually hit a topic that is especially fitting for a Friday (not because some topics are more fitting for a Monday but I figure more people go out on the weekends and none of my topics are ever that fitting for a food blog anyway so who cares). Basically what happened was that our group sat in Heartland Brewery on a six top, and adjacent to our six top sat a group of six girls. My group of friends happened to be a mixture of male and female. I said to my friend Ming,
"$20 dollars to go talk to that girl over there at the six top."
"Uh huh, yea right. Lemme go over there and sarge her and give her negs."
Now all of that would make no sense if you have never read The Game. And at this point I just want to mention that I probably used the words 'sarge' and 'neg' the wrong way, but that is ok because butchering language is what I do best.Now here is where you come in, dear readers. When is it not creepy to walk up to a group of girls in a restaurant and hit on a girl? Because we had two girls in our group that night, both of whom had differing opinions on it. But my claim was that there would be no situation when it would NOT be creepy. So what should my friend Ming should have done? Should he have taken my $20 and approached the group?
Rai Rai Ken
Address: 214 E. 10th St. New York, NY 10003
Phone: 212-477-7030
MapPosted by Danny on January 25 2008 at 12:37 pm
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I generally distrust any strangers who talks to me, even if it's something innocuous. But Ming looks like Totoro, so maybe people won't find him creepy.
;-p
Ang on January 25 2008 at 6:05 pm
Kind of food gossip here ?! I don't really know american rules but french guys acts first and think later. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Depends the girl and the situation but most important there is no regret. I think spontaneity is good. Carpe diem ! Great pics as usual by the way, light was amazing.
Deli on January 25 2008 at 8:57 pm
I'll go with Deli's take on spontaneity!...You never know till you try! I enjoy the curry rice at Rai Rai Ken...but have yet to find ramen in this city that lives up to the stuff we get in Hawaii -__-
Kathy on January 26 2008 at 4:03 pm
Ang,
I will be sure to tell Totoro that he should just use his furry goodness as an asset.
Deli,
Carpe diem indeed! Yea I think my blog will always have little tid bits like this, gotta keep it interesting!
Kathy,
You are right, you never know until you try! Where do you go for ramen in Hawaii? I will have to ask my friends what their take is on that subject.
Danny on January 28 2008 at 11:19 am
Ramen restaurents are beyond me. Ramen is something one quickly put together with veggie and meat when one does not want the trouble to cook. Why do NY people spend $10+ for a bowl of that? In Atlanta, we can have a bowl of Vietnamese noodle (with decent beef broth and lots of fresh veggies) for less than $10 ...
Atlanta on February 3 2008 at 7:21 pm
Yea I tend to agree about the cost of ramen. There are Vietnamese restaurants that sell pho a a much lower price than ramen, and it is arguably just as delicious. Sometimes ramen just sounds good though!
Danny on February 4 2008 at 9:47 am