Takashi Tamai wanted to cook something no one else in Colorado had thought of. Jeff Osaka was interested in incorporating ingredients with a local bent. Julia Rivera continues to blend Korean and other cooking traditions in a way that has made her food truck wildly popular.
All three make some of the weirdest, wackiest ramen you can find in Denver.
Is it traditionally Japanese? No. But what does traditional even mean when it comes to ramen? After all, Osaka pointed out, noodles came originally from China, and ramen didn’t even become the ubiquitous dish it is in Japan until the late 1950s. So, is it the dashi (a kind of savory broth made in Japan) that makes it, the noodles, the many accouterments?
Related: Colorado’s new self-serve ramen shops take instant noodles to the next level
Does curry fit in? Or searing spice. What about corn or cheese or chocolate?
Osaka believes they all do. “There are a lot of critics out there, people who spent a week in Japan, so all of a sudden they are the expert on it,” he said about the notion of tradition. “But being fresh and creative is what matters to me. Being stuck in a box is not that fun.”
Here are some of the most unusual ramen bowls you can find around Denver.
Chocolate ramen
Chef Takashi Tamai of Ramen Star, 4044 Tejon St., loves making classic ramen styles — like tonkotsu, shoyu and miso — using a broth that is cooked down for four days with pork or chicken bones. But he also wanted to do something that no one else in Colorado had on the menu. “As far as I know, there was no chocolate ramen in the state when I introduced it,” he said in an email. “Our chocolate ramen is an unconventional and creative dish that blends the rich, sweet flavor of chocolate with the savory elements of our traditional signature ramen.”
To make it, Ramen Star adds dark and white chocolate in quantities that will complement the savory broth rather than overwhelm it. “Balancing the sweetness … is the most important thing,” Tamai said. “The chocolate should add richness and complexity … and the broth [should have] lots of the umami flavors and delicious savory taste.”
In addition, Tamai and his team experiment with other flavors and textures sometimes “to keep the dish interesting,” including chocolate ravioli, strawberry and chocolate whipped cream.
Cheesy ramen
Carbonara ramen, which is ramen made with pecorino romano or other cheeses, and bacon and eggs — as typically seen in spaghetti carbonara — was a viral trend over the summer, with a few spots like Osaka adding it to the menu with a wink. Instant ramen makers (like Buldak’s famous pink one) also have it. But cheesy ramen isn’t new. The Mukja food truck makes birria-style ramen (see below) using spicy kalbi jiim (Korean braised beef), pickled veggies, green onions and shredded cheese that gets blowtorched on top. The dish fits perfectly with Julia Rivera’s cooking style, which fuses her family’s Korean cuisine with other cuisines, like Mexican.
Tokio, in Denver’s Ballpark district, also keeps cheesy ramen, Cremoso Diablo, on the menu. It begins with a creamy, spicy pork and chicken broth, veggies like bok choy and pickled bamboo, spicy sesame oil, heavy cream, cheddar and Monterey Jack cheese.
Chorizo green chile ramen
When Jeff Osaka started making chorizo green chile ramen at his eponymous noodle shop, he’d buy the green chiles from a stand on Federal Boulevard like home chefs all over the city. Back then, the dish was seasonal. But it caught on quickly, and by the summer of 2024 it had become a year-round offering at Osaka Ramen (the winner of The Denver Post’s food bracket challenge earlier this year), meaning the restaurant, at 2611 Walnut St. in Denver, goes through enough chiles now that the cooks use a food supplier.
“We are taking the local influence from Colorado and trying to be creative,” he said, adding that the bowl is the third most popular among his six ramen offerings. The sausage comes from Denver-base Polidori and the chiles are a mix of Pueblo-grown and Hatch.
Birria ramen
Birria ramen dates back a few years to another viral online trend. But it has become a staple at places like Kiké’s Red Tacos, 1200 W. 38th Ave., Mukja, Osaka and many Mexican food trucks and restaurants. Typically birria ramen mixes ramen noodles and shredded or cubed beef in a broth with Mexican herbs and spices. A layer of cheese is added to the top of each steaming bowl.
Other unusual ramens:
Butter lobster ramen
Dragonfly Noodle, with two locations in Denver and Boulder, offers butter-poached Maine lobster tail ramen with wakame seaweed, spicy sprouts, cloud ear mushroom and scallions in a bowl of miso-bonito broth. Dragonfly has, in the past, done a ramen with a char sui rib on top.
Curry Ramen
Sukiya Ramen, with four shops between Greenwood Village and Boulder, brings the curry flavors with its Curry Tonkotsu. This bowl floats a fried chicken cutlet in pork broth, with thin noodles, a soft-boiled egg, green onions, marinated bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, pickled ginger, bok choy, naruto and nori.
You can also find curry ramen at Katsu Ramen in Aurora, and Sera’s Ramen Enclave, on West 32nd Avenue in Denver, which makes a “Saigon curry” Vietnamese fusion bowl.
Extra spicy
In the United States, many people seek out spicy ramen, but that’s not necessarily the case in Japan, according to Osaka, where ramen wasn’t meant to bind to your tongue and set off pain receptors in your brain. Nevertheless, spicy ramen from places like Katsu and Uncle Ramen, with two locations in Denver, sure is warming on a snowy day. (Osaka loves spicy ramen, too.)
Or you could burn off a cold (or a hangover) with Deathwish, a ramen from Glo Noodle House, 4450 W. 38th Ave., that ups the heat level with a chili-pork broth, confit bacon, egg, narutomaki, green onion, bean sprouts, chili flakes, black garlic oil, chili oil and crispy shallots. Or get a double dose with the Gravedigger (for two). Glo has a few other unusual ramen bowls, including one with crispy lemon-glazed chicken shio and another with barbecue wagyu brisket shoyu.
Kimchi ramen
Many places offer their own version of this mashup with Korean cuisine, including Tatsu Izakaya, 2022 S. University Blvd., which serves a creamy pork broth with kimchi (fermented veggies), onion, chashu, a poached egg, bamboo, bok choy and cabbage; and Ototo, from the owners of Sushi Den, with makes a pork kimchi ramen with soft-boiled egg in a tonkotsu broth.
Thai-style vegetarian
Both Uncle and Osaka Ramen lean on Thai flavors for their vegetarian ramen. Uncle makes one that is based on the northern Thai khao soi, a yellow curry broth with trumpet mushrooms, spicy chili jam, mustard greens, onions and lime. Osaka uses Thai green coconut curry.
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