I woke up Saturday with a glimmer in my eye. I knew it was going to be a great day because lunch was going to be at Santouka, which is widely known as one of the best places–if not THE BEST place–for ramen on this side of the globe. Santouka isn’t really a restaurant per se; it’s more of a stall tucked away in the corner of a food court inside of Mitsuwa, a Japanese supermarket. My fall break’s success relied largely in part on slurping ramen from Santouka; it was a ramen pilgrimage–after flying from Nashville, driving across town to West LA, navigating the supermarket’s overcrowded parking lot, and creeping for an empty seat in the food court, I was finally able to sit down and drink from a broth that was nothing short of incredible. In fact, I ordered two bowls of ramen. Who knows when I’ll visit next?
My first bowl was a large order of shio ramen. While shio means salt in Japanese, to call this soup a salt broth is a gross injustice; the flavor of the soup is an intermingling of salt, meat, and seafood, which creates one of the most complex assortment of molecules to ever elicit tastes on my tongue. I had to let the soup sit in my mouth for a moment to determine everything I was tasting. Salty, meaty, seafoody, umami, and even sweet. This is a bowl of noodles that needs no accessories. The pieces of fatty pork, fishcake, seaweed, and scallions were all an afterthought. As for the noodles: some would describe them as al dente, others would say they were Q (or QQ). As long as they weren’t soggy, it was fine for me.
Even though my stomach was bursting to me, I decided to ignore my body and order another bowl of ramen. My next visit might not be for another couple of years. So I ordered a bowl of shoyu ramen, which had a soy sauce base. The soup was also delicious, just not delicious to the max like the shio ramen. After eating, I only had two options for afternoon activities: have my stomach pumped so I wouldn’t throw up, or go take a nap. So we went to the beach and took a nap.
Traffic was at a standstill because of a large hillside brushfire. It sucked because we were stuck for a good 30 minutes, but we at least able to see helicopters dump water on the fire. Seeing it in person is way more exciting than watching on TV.
For dinner, we went to Father’s Office 2.0 in Culver City. The space accommodates a lot more than the first Father’s Office, but there are still a bunch of people there, so it’s still difficult to find a place to sit. Like at the Mitsuwa food court, we had to creep around a bit before finding a table.
Father’s Office is known for having one of the nation’s best burgers. There aren’t any gimmicks like wagyu or kobe beef, or truffles, or foie gras, or gold flakes; it’s aged beef, caramelized onions, arugula, and bleu cheese. Each ingredient added a different dimension of taste to the palate. In short: get in my belly.
The sweet potato fries, like all sweet potato fries, were crunchy morsels of sweet, starchy goodness. You can never go wrong ordering sweet potato fries. The beer was also good. I’m not a beer connesseur–I don’t know how to order anything other than a Blue Moon–so seeing the selection of over 100 beers was a quite intimidating. My friends ordered the beers, and I drank them. That’s how I usually order alcohol. How have I made it this far without getting roofied? It’s probably because I’m not a very noteworthy conquest.
