Productination

I was feeling a mixture of cold, loneliness, hunger, and sadness.

I was in the perfect mindset to enjoy the bowl of ramen in front of me.

Don’t let the skinny façade fool you, I am an emotional eater, and one of the foods that provides the most comfort for me is noodles in soup. There is just something very satisfying in the act of eating a hearty bowl of noodles in flavorful broth. I dunno if it’s science or nothin’, but it helps me clear my mind.

When I was younger, I had much greater access to good noodles of many different cultures. They were readily available to me, and I took advantage. When I moved to Los Angeles, I had to start the search anew; finding good food was a challenging and exciting adventure again.

I began my search for noodles by looking into Vietnamese restaurants in the area. According to the internet, there were no good Vietnamese restaurants near where I lived. My taste buds verified that indeed, one had to go as far as the valley, or that other valley, to get anything decent.

I then leveled the barrel of my sawed-off culinary shotgun at the ramen shops. Certainly, with Los Angeles’s successful Japanese population, there had to be some good ramen in this town. I eventually found a couple gems, including one place that I’d be ready to give the crown of best ramen in LA.

Sure, it was a little expensive for comfort food ($11 for essentially noodles, broth, pork, rice, and salmon roe) but it is alwaysworth it. From the moment I sat down and first inhaled the steam from my broth, to the time I looked at the bottom of my empty bowls, I didn’t look up.

I left transformed, feeling enriched and uplifted.