Term · Japanese culture
Ramen
A Chinese noodle dish that Japan adopted, argued about for a century, and turned into a national obsession with regional loyalties.
In Otakana the clue reads: Noodle soup ordered at a counter shop
- Type
- Term
- Series
- Japanese culture
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- 5 · Easy
Four broths carry most of the map. Shio is salt and clear, shoyu is soy and brown, miso is thick and came out of Hokkaido, and tonkotsu is pork bone boiled until the fat emulsifies and the soup turns opaque. On top go sliced pork, a marinated egg cut to show the soft yolk, bamboo shoots and spring onion. The noodles are wheat, and the alkaline salts in the dough give them their yellow colour and their spring.
The dish arrived with Chinese cooks in port cities, spread through cheap street stalls, and became a staple after the war when American wheat was plentiful and rice was not. Momofuku Ando fried a batch of noodles dry in 1958 and invented the instant version, which a Japanese poll once named the country's best twentieth-century invention, ahead of the bullet train.
Shops are small, loud and fast. You order at a ticket machine, sit at a counter, and eat quickly because the noodles keep softening while you sit there. Naruto Uzumaki has done more for the dish abroad than any tourism campaign, and the pink swirl in his name is a slice of fish cake that floats in the bowl.
Spelling RAMEN
RAMEN is five letters and the trap is a long vowel in the first syllable. The Japanese katakana holds the A open, closer to raa-men, so a strict romanisation gives RAAMEN. English drops the extra A. Nothing doubles, the E is short, and once you have the R and the M placed there are very few options left for the row.