L.A. now has oodles of noodles

If the cult of ramen still mystifies you, you could do worse than to grab a counter seat at the new Little Tokyo branch of Shin-Sen-Gumi, a small restaurant chain that introduced high-quality ramen from Japan's Hakata region to Los Angeles. Most ramen shops offer a limited set of possibilities, but at Shin-Sen-Gumi, you tick off your order on a paper card, which forces you to choose between thick noodles and thin, between noodles cooked soft or hard and between pork-bone tonkotsu broths enhanced with a little, some or quite a lot of the rich pork oil that elevates the texture and the caloric jolt to something approaching thick cream.

By Jonathan Gold

February 2, 2013