A Guide to Korean Ramen

COMMENTS 16

Our experiences with ramen in Canada began in elementary school with good ol’ Mr. Noodle, who pretty much runs the show for Canadian ramen. From there, we developed a deep love for those salty, spicy, delicious, and easy to make noodles, and craved something more. Surely there had to be more to the world of Ramen than plain ole’ Mr. Noodle…

We found later on in life that if we wanted to try something imported (in this case, Ramen) we’d hit K-town (Korea Town: Christie Pitts/North York) or J-town (Japan Town: Markham). We thought that this would be an accurate representation of the Ramen scene in Korea. When we arrived in Korea, though, we were floored. We’re serious when we say that there is an entire gigantic aisle dedicated to all types of ramen in the grocery store, enough ramen to fill our apartment. Oh the joy! Image us spinning in a meadow holding a ramen bowl happily. Yeah.

Anyhow, since we’ve always wanted to make a cheesy infomercial like video, we decided to do it with ramen as the star. We picked out 8 random noodle bowls that we had never tried, and called up our friends to do a taste test. The candidates:

-Jajang Bokki
-Ramen Bokki
-95 Cal
-Salee Gomtang
-”Well-Being” Ramen (aka Sudden Attack)
-Spaghetti Ramen
-Cheese Ramen
-Udung (which is different than ramen, but still hot water added to dry noodles)

What we had in the end is what we hope to be the Foreigners’ Mini-Guide to Korean Ramen. Seven foreigners tasted, rated, and ranked the ramen, so that, hopefully, other foreigners here in Korea will have an idea of what’s good and what’s bad in their ramen aisle. Sure, our tastes are different than a Korean’s tastes, which is why we made this video, SO PLEASE DON’T CONSIDER US INSULTING AND INFIDELS FOR NOT LIKING THE SAME RAMEN AS YOU.