Amen for ramen: Reconsider the student staple at a handful of Little Rock restaurants — and at least one hospital

On Mondays, Coby’s, the cafeteria at Little Rock’s Arkansas Heart Hospital, makes ramen with chicken. On Wednesday and Friday it comes topped with other proteins.
On Mondays, Coby’s, the cafeteria at Little Rock’s Arkansas Heart Hospital, makes ramen with chicken. On Wednesday and Friday it comes topped with other proteins.

Most people think of ramen as a diet staple for impoverished college students, five-for-a-dollar plastic-wrapped instant noodles with seasoning packets that they can make in a minute in a microwave.

But in recent years, fancy, trendy noodle shops have been proliferating in major metropolitan markets, restoring ramen to legitimacy as a distinctive and distinguished dish.

Ramen is considered to be Japanese, but it appears to have originated from Chinese workers selling meals of wheat-based noodles in a meat or (occasionally), miso or fish-based broth from food carts in the early to mid-20th century. The most common broth is tonkatsu, with a stock made from slow-cooked pork bones. Toppings traditionally include chicken, sliced pork or tofu, dried seaweed, bamboo shoots, green onions and cooked eggs, but there are endless regional variations, and you're likely to encounter a lot of broth-and-toppings combinations.

(One specific ingredient, we're told, differentiates real ramen noodles from other wheat-based strands -- say, Chinese lo mein or Italian spaghetti: kansui, a type of alkaline water, which is what gives ramen noodles a signature springy texture.)

We mentioned that ramen shops have become a thing in big cities. Around here, however, while it's served in a few Japanese restaurants, including Mt. Fuji and Sky, you're more likely to encounter ramen on Asian fusion menus, where its composition and style vary widely, and in one much less likely spot -- a hospital cafeteria.

This roundup is not comprehensive. We could have missed fine ramen at some fine places (if we did, drop us a line at eharrison@arkansasonline.com).

Hearty dish

On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you can't miss Coby's, the cafe-cafeteria at Arkansas Heart Hospital, 1701 S. Shackleford Road, Little Rock. Just follow your nose to the left as you enter the front door. On those three days, ramen is such a popular dish that the staff sets up separate "hot" and "ramen" lines to keep congestion to a minimum.

If you want to know why a heart hospital cafeteria is serving ramen, ask CEO Dr. Bruce Murphy, who, as the hospital was planning to reopen its cafe in November 2015, sent chef Coby Smith, for whom the place is named, to Tokyo for a crash course on ramen.

On a recent Monday, braised chicken was the topping on the bowl of firm, curly noodles in a pork-based broth, along with pickled onions, toasted sesame seeds, shredded carrots and cilantro. Other days you might get anything from steak and shrimp to pork belly. You can get it spicy or mild but we'd suggest adding at least a little spice.

That this ramen is popular is due in part to its being tasty, filling and satisfying and, here at least, fairly low in fat (it is at a heart hospital, after all), and part to it being tasty, filling and satisfying and only $5 ($5.55 with tax). Yes, it's served in a plastic bowl, but then that just lets you easily package up whatever's left over.

Asian-fusion versions

• The Simply Miso Ramen ($11) at Sushi Cafe, the original in Little Rock's Pulaski Heights, 5823 Kavanaugh Blvd., and Sushi Cafe West, 11211 Cantrell Road, Little Rock, isn't exactly vegetarian -- the broth is pork-based, but the rest of the ingredients are all veggies -- spinach, mushrooms and tofu. The noodles are firm and springy, just the way they're supposed to be. We didn't try it, but the menu also offers Spicy Shimadaya Ramen (no broth, $15), with jumbo shrimp, egg and fresh vegetables.

• The Japanese Steak and Shrimp Chile Ramen ($9.99) at Pei Wei, which has Little Rock outlets in the Midtowne Shopping Center, 205 N. University Ave., and in the Promenade at Chenal, 17701 Chenal Parkway, also involves no broth. There's a lot of firm, chewy noodles, sauteed with approximately equal numbers of medium-size shrimp and chunks of almost equally chewy steak in a distinctly spicy red-chile-pepper sauce.

• We were a little dubious about the authenticity of the noodles in the $9 Ramen at Southern Gourmasian, 219 W. Capitol Ave., Little Rock -- most of them were flat, like fettuccine, with an occasional strand of something thin and more spaghetti-like. But we had no doubt about the delicious, smoky, moderately spicy broth, or the rest of the accoutrements -- a large poached egg, plentiful shredded pork shoulder, scallions and seaweed.

• The Tonkatsu Ramen Bowl at Kemuri sushi seafood robata, 2601 Kavanaugh Blvd. in Little Rock's Hillcrest, was the most expensive ramen dish we sampled ($18 with roasted pork belly, $16 with roasted chicken,), but also the largest. Our bowl arrived chock-full of surprisingly lean pork belly, nori (seaweed), roasted corn, scallions, spinach, sprouts, slices of fresh jalapeno peppers and Thai basil, topped with a halved slow-cooked egg. Yes, we took home at least a third of it, and it tasted at least as good as cold leftovers.

• Back in May, we encountered the Korean Style Ramen ($4.95) at Kimchi, a Korean restaurant at 3700 S. University Ave., Little Rock, listed on the menu among the "Korean munchies." We described it in a review at the time as "the bargain find in this category ... an amplitude of firm, curling noodles in a huge (certainly for five bucks) bowl of steaming broth, orange, nicely spicy but not inflammatory."

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A kitchen worker assembles a bowl of ramen at Coby’s at Arkansas Heart Hospital.

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A split slow-boiled egg tops the Miso Ramen at Kemuri in Hillcrest.

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The $9 ramen at Southern Gourmasian in downtown Little Rock includes poached egg, pork shoulder and scallions and noodles that may or may not be “authentic.”

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Korean Style Ramen, one of the Korean Style Ramen at Kimchi, a Korean restaurant on Little Rock’s South University Avenue, consists of noodles in a reddish spicy broth.

Style on 12/12/2017

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