I'm gonna be completely honest with you. I love me a good noodle. Oodle's of noodles, I can't get enough.
Tonkotsu ramen at Teri Cafe in San Diego, CA
I have no prejudice, I have equal love for noodles of all shapes, sizes and composition. I'll pay top dollar for a noodle that's worth it without thinking twice. I've also spent many, many meals on the $0.39 side of a pack of instant noodle.
As comforting as it is instantaneous, the leaner years of college were pretty much divided between that and microwave popcorn. But, sometime before the 1970s saw the rise of instant noodles as a low budget savior of broke-ass college students everywhere, ramen had to have had a better identity.
At the Teri Cafe, a teriyaki and noodle house in the Clairemont neighborhood of San Diego, I had steadfast determiation to figure it out. I ordered at the counter and settled into my booth, ready for the real deal.
The cafe is a comforting juxtaposition of So-Cal surfer mentality and the speed, vibrancy and efficiency of japanese society. A sizable bowl with a mound of slurp-able noodles appeared minutes later. It seemed that these thin egg-noodles were, in fact, instant.
They're thin, and have a slight amount of pull, but they are perfectly chewy. Let's face it, the broth might be good, but you eat a bowl of ramen for those delicious noodles.
Tonkotsu Ramen: a bowl of oink that melts on your tongue with a ton of noodles to enjoy.
They peaked out at me from a cloudy, rich tonkotsu-- pork-bone --broth, that for all intents and purposes oinks with deliciousness. It kicks the living daylights of your grandmother's best chicken noodle soup. A couple pieces of cabbage, some bean sprouts, a strip of nori and a boiled egg were semi-hidden in the cloudy broth that had sliced green onions speckled about. Resting on top of the noodles was the tenderest piece of pork I'd ever had in a soup. It melted on my tongue.
A different bowl, this one again in that delicious creamy tonkotsu broth, was packed of stir fried veggies, tender pieces of chicken and topped with kamabuko, a fish cake. Aptly called the Banzai bowl, these flavors were a celebration of the incredible noodles in their own right.
The Banzai Bowl. Stir fried veggies and chicken. Topped with a couple slices of kamabuko.
The act of eating ramen came quite naturally to me, much like the process of washing your hair. Eat noodles 'til there is too much broth. Slurp up delicious broth, until the noodles start to peak out again. Then repeat. A few slurps and I was in noodle heaven. Even on a hot Californian afternoon the ramen was restorative and wonderfully satisfying.
And, at around $6.25 a bowl, a broke-ass college student could still live off the stuff.
Teri Cafe is located at 7305 Clairemont Mesa Blvd, San Diego, CA 92111.
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