Nagoya Dining

When I first came to Japan, I answered the standard “what Japanese food do you like?” question with “I absolutely love ramen!” I wasn’t sure why I was typically met with a look of disappointment, as if I had let them down in some way. It took me a few months to realize that Japanese consider ramen not a dish of their own creation, but instead of Chinese extraction, hence the spelling of the word ラーメン [ramen] in katakana, the alphabet of loan words. However, as it uses Chinese-style wheat noodles, ramen is actually a Japanese dish, and here in Nagoya, you can find some fantastic restaurants that serve up fantastic bowls of steaming noodle soup. Here are just a few of them. Misen Misen isn’t strictly a ramen restaurant, as it does a wide array of excellent Taiwanese dishes at their three venues in Meieki, Yabacho, and Imaike. However, their Taiwan ramen is a local institution (don’t let the name fool you, this dish is as Nagoya as Ichiro and red miso). Ground pork, Chinese chives, green onions, and bean sprouts are seasoned with hot red peppers and other spices, fried, and placed on boiled ramen noodles in a…