Lets start at the end...

...This doesn’t work for most writer-audience relationships, but it might work for us!

Tonight was the first night, in what seemed like a solid week of rain, that Los Angelinos could see what stars penetrated the light pollution. It seemed like the first time people had been out of the house in days. It seemed like the first night I have gone out in LA. This wasn’t the case but something had changed, as if the rain had shed a skin we had been wearing for so long. As we set out, our destination was Maruten Udon (this is a facebook page link) in Santa Monica.             

We took the winding streets above the coast, which slowly turned into the familiar grid that brought me to Maruten for the first time. I had stopped there by chance as I was trying to find a Pho place after a concert.  But it was Sunday, I had missed the Pho by several minutes and Maruten was closed. Yet it caught my attention through a sign on its big wooden door, “This is not a sushi house! We have no sushi!”. With such a show of passion I knew I had to come back.

Maruten is funny; it is an Udon house on one half of the building and an Izakaya house, a style of Japanese tapas, on the other side. Only a small step separates the sides, but no Udon on the Izakaya side, and no Izakaya on the Udon side. Simple. Like so many other things in Maruten simplicity seems to be the wave everyone is riding.

            Maruten specializes in Udon, so that’s what you’re having. Now here are the choices: hot or cold. Cold Udon is called Bukkake, and though you may laugh now, one day you will get a Bukkake and love it. Now there are several menu options but, other than the beef and onion Udon, they are mostly veggie-based soups. Once you get you soups order in mind you can also get tempura sides, such as hard boiled egg and sweet potato. I highly recommend the egg it’s an amazing complement to the stock.

So there it is--Udon, Tempura and if you go from 6-7 Mon.-Thurs. 99 cent Sapporo--simple and delicious.

Find out what we had and our recommendations in a couple days...

Eat a Noodle!

In middle school someone told me that if you take the word “Machiavelli”, move some letters around, add a couple, subtract a couple and divide by 3.14.

I would get the message, “2Pac lives”. Going off that logic, if you take the word “Noodle”, add a V take out a couple letters and move some things around you get “love”. Some other results are, No El, done, eon and doe.  But love is really the only word that can describe where my life has led me. To a dish that is simple and honest, broth and noodle. A simple delivery system for all that’s good in the world of flavor.

            In a time when foodies, are fucking up everything from street food to diners, and even a simple burrito cost $8.00 so they can know that the chicken they are about to turn into shit had a great organic life. I summon my fellow American to pay no more than an hours wage for a meal that will carry you through the day. While stepping out of the box and putting some fermented fish sauce on your uncooked/still cooking meat as it is pulled down by the vermicelli and drowned in a broth that will make you want to kill the next foodie you see.

            So come join my friends and I as we slurp our way through bowls of noodles here and there. Be it Soba or Vermicelli, Chinese or Korean and what ever else lay out there from around the world. When we find it you will know.

We will find the places to go, and try our hand at making some semblance of soup ourselves.  We have cameras and hands; I think we may do all right.