Fuck The Cronut, The Ramen Burger Is The New Craze In New York City
NY Post – Early Saturday morning, hordes of 20-somethings began lining up for one of New York’s most coveted culinary creations. They passed the three-plus-hour wait with smartphones in one hand and iced coffees in the other. Some napped, curled on the ground, while others stood with friends, foggily recalling the previous night’s adventures. The foodie throngs weren’t hungrily waiting for a Cronut on Spring Street. They were lined up on the Williamsburg waterfront, ravenous for New York’s newest culinary craze: the Ramen Burger. A Japanese-American mash-up, the fad food of the millisecond features a hamburger patty sandwiched between two discs of compressed ramen noodles in lieu of a traditional bun. To date, it’s only been available on three occasions — the past few Saturdays at Brooklyn’s Smorgasburg food market — and each time, it’s sold out in just a few hours. It’s definitely crazy!” says Keizo Shimamoto, 35, the creator of the Ramen Burger and a former computer programmer who quit his day job in 2009 to devote himself to ramen and blog about it at GoRamen.com. “I didn’t expect it to be this popular.” By the time Smorgasburg opened at 11 a.m. last Saturday, more than 100 people stood waiting, some having lined up as early as 7:45 a.m. Shimamoto sold out of the 300 burgers he had on hand in a matter of hours, leaving dozens waiting on line to go without. To make sure she wasn’t one of those left hungry, Danielle Cheng, a 21-year-old student from Staten Island, spent last Friday night at a friend’s apartment in Manhattan to cut down on her morning travel time. “I don’t really have high expectations,” she admits, “but this is kind of like the new Cronut, and I want to experience it first.”
THE BUN
Two discs of compressed noodles from Sun Noodle, a New Jersey company that supplies many of the city’s top ramen joints, surround the patty. Shimamoto parboils the noodles al dente, then uses a secret “proprietary process” to form them into a patty. At Smorgasburg, the noodle “buns” are cooked on a griddle with a squirt of sesame oil. The final texture is chewy, not crunchy.
SECRET SAUCE
After being griddled, the beef is lacquered with a shoyu ramen sauce. While chef Keizo Shimamoto won’t reveal exactly what’s in it, he says it’s soy sauce-based and cooked down “for hours.” Shoyu ramen broth also traditionally contains garlic, ginger, scallions and dashi fish stock.
ARUGULA
Shimamoto says he picked the fancy greens because he wanted to contrast an “American gourmet ingredient” against the Asian elements.
SCALLIONS
A sprinkle adds a nice crunch and a welcome counter-bite to the greasy burger and salty sauce.
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THE BEEF
A smaller-than-expected (just ¼ pound), 100 percent chuck beef patty is sourced from Burger Maker in Carlstadt, NJ. It’s 25 percent fat, making for a very juicy — and messy — burger that’s barely contained by its paper wrapper. No wonder it comes with a generous side of napkins.
So lets get this straight. You want a shitty quarter pound burger in between some poor people noodles? And you’re willing to wait 3 hours on line at 7 in the morning for it? Fucking New York foodies. The absolute worst. I mean everyone in this world knows I’m not the type to make my own food and serve myself and shit. I pay other people to do that and have Mexicans on motorized bikes bring it to me. But if 300 people wanna line up outside my apartment and pay me 8 bucks a piece for a shitty burger and some Cup O’ Noodles, consider me in fucking business bro. I can cook these things just as good as the next idiot and make like 7 dollars profit every burger.
And this guy can give me a break with the “proprietary process” to turn the noodles into buns. There is a 500% chance this thing falls apart the second you take a bite. I thought the Cronut craze was stupid but this takes it to another level. Straight up poor people food and people are traveling everywhere and sleeping outside for it and shit. Hipster Foodies might be the most dramatic assholes on the planet.
PS – The fact that nobody out there has jumped on my Waffalo idea and turned that into a new hysteria-filled crazy is insane. Yea, that one place in Jersey made it, but I hear they already stopped serving it. If some food truck or food festival introduced the Waffalo it would be the same sort of dramatics as with the cronut and ramen burger.