Ippudo

Two weeks ago, I took Christine out for dinner to Ippudo as a birthday present.  Naturally, Luigi and Brooks joined us, and it’s taken me THIS long to write about it.  There’s traffic in blogland!

Brooks and I got there at 6PM to put our names on the list for a 6:30 spot.  We finally got our table at 6:50, but the table we got was HUGE.  It was one of those semi-private booths for a party size up to 8.  We felt detached from the rest of the noisy restaurant, which made us feel very special (with reason, of course)!  The restaurant has a weird shape.  It’s P-shaped with a long entrance and bar in the front and the main dining room in the back.  There really is no ambience, unless you consider the frequent Japanese yelling and loud chatter ambient.  The entire restaurant is dark.  The decoration is trendy Japanese with notes of red, black, white, and grey.  The booth didn’t require us taking off our shoes, so it obviously wasn’t too traditional.  Ippudo also practices communal tables, which I really enjoy.

This was probably my fourth visit to Ippudo, but I wanted to share my ramen joy with my friends.  Usually, I only go for the ramen, because that’s all I can stomach by myself.  However, we ordered appetizers and some sake this time.  I can’t remember exactly what we ordered, and the menu online was a bit different from what I remembered.

For our appetizers, we ordered fried chicken, chicken wings, and BBQ spare ribs.  I’m not lying or changing my own memory when I say everything was AMAZING (yea, I need new adjectives).  But it really was!  The meat basically melted off the bone into my mouth.  Chicken, though not my favorite protein, was a completely different thing when done Ippudo-style.  I remember the chicken wings as spicy hot and tangy.  The fried chicken also had an amazing flavor (much better than Momofuku’s chicken dinner).

For our entrees, we ALL ordered the same thing: Akamaru Modern Ramen with kakuni (extra pork).  Yes, I’m being VERY original when I order the same damn thing every time, but I can’t help myself.  I promise I’ll try something new next time.  There must be something supernatural about it though.  I wrote about the ramen before, so I won’t go on raving and raving.

The dinner was extremely fun.  Luigi, Brooks, Christine, and I make the best dinner crew on earth.  We have so much fun, laugh WAY TOO HARD (so we work off all those calories we’re consuming), and always go for dessert (minus Christine, ughhh).