Common Ramen at Minca

Last week Eugene, Nathalie, and I needed a quick Ramen fix. My favorite Ramen spot, Ippudo isn't an option for a quick meal unless you have an open afternoon in front of you. Since I joined an insanely busy Silicon Valley startup last March, the days when I could dedicate two or more hours to lunch are only a distant but very pleasant memory. Minca, located on 5th street in the East Village, almost always can meet my one hour time requirement, including the ten minute round trip bike ride from my apartment. When my friends and I are discussing where to get Ramen downtown, Minca is almost always part of the conversation, yet somehow it's never the star. The general concensus is they are a solid B player, sometimes straying into B+ territory, yet never really making it into the big leagues. Don't get me wrong, some things are very good here, but many things are just OK.

The first thing that jumps out at me when perusing Minca's lunchtime menu are the prices, they aren't cheap. The basic spicy Miso Ramen I ordered was $13 and didn't even come as a set. For that price, I could be digging into a bowl of Akamaru Modern at Ippudo, not to mention the abundance of delicious five or six dollar bowls of noodles I can find at many Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants in Chinatown. True, they are very different, but that food is more satisfying to me and my wallet is always reassuringly heavier when I leave.This is my number one gripe about Minca, I would feel a lot better about eating these noodles if they hovered around eight dollars. Japanese food is always pricier though, maybe because of the quality of ingredients, but also because it's Japanese food, and we are conditioned to pay more for it.

At home in any noodle bar

They really do have some bouncy noodles at Minca. The standard yellow ramen noodles that came with my order of Spicy Miso Ramen were cooked to a perfect al-dente. So was the half a soy-boiled egg that came with it. I'm a big fan of hard boiled eggs with ramen, I love how the yolk soaks up the broth. I'm less enamorate of the soft or poached eggs you can add to your soup at Ippudo and other Ramen places, the yolk blends into the broth in a runny mess. The pork is very tasty at Minca, but really it's much too fatty, an in my murky broth it was difficult to discern pieces of fat that had detached themselves into the main body of soup, occasionally yielding a fatty and unappealing mouthful. The spicy miso broth was interesting. It was a deep brown that looked and tasted slightly of peanut butter and was slightly thicker than your average broth. Like a lot of things at Minca, it was serviceable, but they didn't take it to that next level, that is, the level where I pick up the bowl and slurp down every last drop of broth. It also didn't live up to it's name, this soup isn't spicy enough by half, but maybe my senses are so jaded by the Jalapenos I eat every day that I just can't tell anymore.

Spicy Miso Ramen at Minca

Eugene went for the special of the day which was a cold ramen plate served with a hot dipping sauce and a few other sundry items. Eugene really enjoyed it, but Nathalie seemed nonplussed. Even so, I was jealous when there food came out- I liked the look of the side plate that accompanied it.

Side plate from dipping Ramen

Cold Ramen, ready to be dipped in warm broth

Quite a spread

Eugene and Nathalie- pre-gaming.

In the end, it was a satisfying meal. A workaday meal. For my grandfather, such a meal might have been an onion and a liverwurst sandwich in a brown paper bag. Things have changed since he left Eastern Poland and arrived on these shores in the 1920's, and I'm sure most of what I eat on a daily basis  would be completely foreign to him. Still, a workaday meal is a good thing. It's tasty and nourishing even though an hour later you will have forgotten what you just ate, but I suppose we can't all eat herring and onions every day.