Love Me Some Ramen

By Rachel K.

I personally am in love with ramen. There I said it. I love ramen. Even since I was little it was my favorite meal. To this day there is something thrilling about opening that thin plastic packaging and finding a block of fried molded noodles. It’s so easy to make that at the age of six I was preparing it on my own. Being a vegetarian, oriental was always my favorite, the Maruchan brand oriental to be exact. I was afraid of the Top Ramen brand I must confess. There was something about it; it was not sold at my regular grocery store but at the small one that sold canned food with white labels that would just say “Peas” or “Canned Meat” that scared me. I associated Top Ramen with off brand food of Appalachia. Once venturing out of Southeastern Ohio I discovered to my amazement that Top Ramen was in fact a very common and acceptable brand to consume. So for years I stuck to my oriental, as my passion for ramen grew so did my taste. When I stumbled upon the ramen isle in the Asian market at around age seven I thought that my life was complete. I began to try new flavors like Kimchi, Curry and Spicy Hot.

Now even though I love ramen I don’t’ eat it everyday. But I did find a man who does, Yama, he records his ramen experiences on YouTube. Yama has 4,475 subscribers and more than 5,561,528 video uploads. That’s a whole lot or ramen.

Recently on the Official Ramen Homepage a survey was conducted to find out peoples favorite “classic” ramen flavors. Coming in at first was Chicken at 43% followed by oriental at 21% then came beef, shrimp, and in last place was pork. I decided to do my own ramen survey here at Cityterm and I must say I was not pleased with the results. 80% liked chicken the best, 15% were for oriental, beef and pork tied at .05%. Shrimp was obsolete and pork and beef only had one person each. When it comes to ramen, Cityterm is almost unanimously in favor of chicken.

There is a comfort when it comes to eating ramen that has made the dish so popular. It’s hot broth and soft noodles screams or rather quietly states “don’t worry at the end of the day I will always be here”. Every time the warm broth runs down my throat I feel soothed and at ease. This is what makes ramen what it is.

Although ramen is thought to be a Japanese food ramen actually was first made in China over 4,000 years ago, only later was it brought to Japan. Due to a food shortage after the Second World War ramen became even more popular in Japan because it was cheap and easy to make. Soon after that the instant ramen that we eat today came out according to Ramenlicious. So I guess I am thankful in some way for the Japanese’s food shortage because now I have the ramen I know and love, as bad at that may sound.

Today ramen is so popular in Japan that ramen vending machines are popping up everywhere.

If only the US were this progressive on the ramen front. Perhaps this could be just what the country needs to bring us back together. Who cares about political parties when instant ramen is at stake? How can we argue whilst slurping our noodles out of precooked cans? I believe I’m onto something.