My previous ramen post (link below), about what kinds of ramen we have in Chicago now, led to a few real-life conversations. I also had a different conversation about ramen places I liked in Chicago, with people I’m 99% sure don’t read my Substack. I guess it’s a natural topic of conversation with that Japanese guy you know. So I kept thinking about the post.
In there, I mentioned a few places that I knew about but hadn’t been. It bothered me a bit because the restaurants I mentioned are definitely recommendations—there are places that I’ve been to but didn’t mention because I didn’t think they’re worth mentioning—so I wanted to get to those places.
Thankfully, ramen is one of those things that’s not socially awkward at all to eat alone at a restaurant, and I’m finding that I’m relatively flexible for lunch. So I was able to try 3 new places in a few months.
Gyuro Ramen
My workplace decided to give us a random day off in the summer, so I decided to hang out at Sawada Coffee in West Loop and read, and have lunch at Gyuro Ramen.
Gyu (牛) means cattle, and that’s what this place wants you to have. Instead of tonkotsu which is pork bones (ton/豚 means pig), you can get gyukotsu ramen, which uses beef bones for the broth1. They have other options, but if you’re specifically going to this place this is definitely what you should get2. Kamo shio ramen with duck broth does look intriguing, though.
The broth looks and tastes similar to tonkotsu, but definitely has a kick of beefiness to it. The topping choices are pretty unique and also beefy. You can get filet mignon steak, beef chashu, wagyu misuji, or premium, which is “Topped w. Domestic Wagyu (medium rare), beef tongue, beeef chashu, beef chunks, Truffle Wagyu Wontons, Menma, Scallions and Tamago”. I got wagyu misuji—misuji is a specific cut from the shoulder of the animal—and it is recommended. It should be fattier than the steak but not as heavy as chashu.3
Chicago Ramen Annex
My wife and I had something to do in the northwest suburbs, and took the opportunity to go to Chicago Ramen Annex for some Jiro-style ramen.
As you can probably see from the picture, this one really isn’t subtle. It’s a big, meaty, greasy bowl of ramen, and while I haven’t had Jiro-style ramen in Japan to compare this against, I think it’s pretty good if you’re in the mood for that kind of thing.
We also got Hiyashi Tantanmen, which was a seasonal special. Tantanmen (担担麺) is originally a Szechuan spicy noodle dish, but ramen places have adapted it to Japanese tastes. And this is hiyashi (chilled) tantanmen, so it’s probably only available during the summer. What made this dish stand out was that the ground pork topping (normal for tantanmen) was a bit sweet, creating some hot and sweet action.
Kajiken
I can work remote as a default, and I realized that one place I could do it was at the public library in Chinatown, where I would have some great lunch options. For one, I could eat at Kajiken.4
This is a Japanese chain specializing in abura soba, which literally means oily soba, but is basically soupless ramen.
The picture is how the bowl looks when they serve you. There’s no soup, but there is sauce and oil at the bottom, so you want to stir this up until the sauce is mixed up with the food. This bowl has similar components to regular ramen, but the experience is very different. A warm and satisfying soup is usually a big part of great ramen, but here you have no soup. The upside for abura soba is that sauces are (almost by definition) thicker than soups. So you can get concentrated doses of flavor that you don’t get with regular ramen. Somewhat like the Jiro-style ramen from Chicago Ramen Annex, if this kind of thing is what you’re craving, I think this is a good place to have it.
Final thoughts
I knew that all 3 of these places had something a bit different from other ramen places in town, and they delivered on that count. I do think they’re all worth checking out.
I want to end on a short comment about eating out when you have a toddler. Eating out for lunch happens somewhat regularly, but dinner is a logistical challenge.
All 3 of us could go, and the kid has to handle being stuck in a high chair with unfamiliar food, and we need to get home in time for his bedtime.
Just the parents could go, but that requires a babysitter, and if we’re going to have that large fixed cost, we’d rather do something fancier than ramen.
I could go alone, but since I’m in charge of dinner, I need to set that up, and my wife needs to be fine with doing all the tasks at home while I’m out. Given that trying new ramen places is distinctly a hobby and not a job, it’s a tough sell.
This is why all of the ramen adventures above happened during lunch. I would love to compare Gyuro Ramen with the other gyukotsu ramen place, Monster Ramen, but that one is dinner-only (2023-12-04 update: They appear to have weekend lunch now). I haven’t made it to Akahoshi Ramen for the same reason.
Also, I’ll be very happy when he’s old enough to enjoy going out for dinner with some consistency.
What I’m listening to now
Here’s some indie rock from São Paulo:
The band name (“Sophia Chablau and an Enormous Waste of Time“) is a mouthful, and probably a tad too self-conscious. But they can play.
And their range is super-wide. They can rock loud (“Quem vai apagar a luz“), rock soft (”Embaraço total”), sing about college philosophy class in 60s Brazilian style (“As coisas que não te ensinam na faculdade de filosofia“), and even samba (“Deus Tesão“). I was playing this album in the background this week, and about 7 songs in, my wife was surprised/impressed that it was all the same people.
Definitely in the top 10 albums I’ve heard this year.
Chicago Tribune wrote last year that they actually use bison bones. I didn’t confirm this.
Gyuro Ramen’s ownership is shared with Strings Ramen, and there’s some overlap in the menus.
Now that you know gyu is cattle, you may be wondering what wa in wagyu is. Wa (和) is an old name for Japan, and appears in words like washoku (和食), meaning Japanese food.
We actually went here later as a family. It didn’t add much to my perspective here because we ordered almost the same things as when I went alone.