So I’m full of shit and man enough to admit it. I’ve got three more ramen shops to write up, and but I’m leaving to go skiing today. Park City. With the Sundance Festival going on. So much for a quiet, off-peak visit to see my college roomate Matt, who happens to bake bread for the resort.

So how about Ramen Month? No, month’s almost over. Ramen Q1?

I’m interrupting Ramen Week to announce that February 9 marks the start of the lunar new year. Happy 4702, everyone! All over Little Saigon, restaurants and bakeries are gearing up with seasonal treats for Tet. This also means that weekend traffic in that part of town will be a nightmare - go during the week, if you’re able.

Visit Viet World Kitchen to read Andrea Nguyen’s Tet edition.

You’re looking at a sesame and cashew brittle I picked up at Van’s Bakery. It’s nothing like the clodgy, too-thick pistachio brittle I make that puts me at risk of dental reconstruction. I hang my head in shame. Van’s diaphanous candy just barely cements the lightly toasted sesame seeds and cashew pieces into an impossibly thin crisp.

You’ll find all sorts of Viet / Chinese / French baked goods at Van’s. Try the freshly baked waffles. Available in durian flavor or pandan/coconut, even my 4 year old lily-white stepson likes them. Don’t be a big gringo wuss - go. It’s a bakery, for chrissakes, you’ll find something you’ll like. If Van’s is “too Asian,” try the very French Boulangerie Pierre & Patisserie a couple doors down.

Like so many other treats available now, this brittle is around for only a few more weeks. Get some before it’s gone!

Van’s Bakery
Several locations in Orange County, San Gabriel, and San Jose
14346 Brookhurst St
Garden Grove, CA
714-839-1666

Boulangerie Pierre & Patisserie
14352 Brookhurst St
Garden Grove, CA
714-418-9098

Goofy name aside, the folks at Oki Doki are serious. About soup. Soup is consistently great here. I’ve been telling people on Chowhound for years that the sizzling rice soup is amazing. If it’s possible to kick ass with both feet, they do it day in and day out with their chicken stock.

Their ramen appears to be an afterthought, however. You’ll easily miss it if you’re not paying attention to the menu. Unsurprisingly, they make the ramen with this fabulously flavored chicken broth seasoned only with salt. Chicken soup is an exception in the pork-centric ramen world, and delicious. I finshed the whole bowl of soup, right to the bottom.

Most of the toppings are typically Japanese: the chashu, hardboiled egg, bean sprouts, and scallions. The delicous, fried crunchy bits of garlic are an atypical, probably Viet influence. Oki Doki bills itself as a pan-Asian restaurant with touches from Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese cuisine. Some of these international items are good, like the Korean seafood pancakes and the Vietnamese Imperial egrolls. Avoid the stir fried Chinese dishes, however.

Eggrolls w/ lettuce and mint to wrap them in and spicy nuoc mam dipping sauce

This place is Japanese owned, so ask the wait staff to guide you their Japanese izakaya specialities if you go for dinner. The lunch menu is more limited. Izakaya are pubs where small dishes are served to share with your drinking companions. The menu of daily specials is usually good. Of these, I like the eggplant sauteed with ground pork and red chili powder. It’s a version of mabo dofu, called mabo nasu. This is a lightly spiced Japanese version of the Sichuan dish called pockmarked lady’s tofu, minus the tofu and Sichuan peppercorn.

But I digress. Oki Doki makes a fine ramen, especially if you prefer a lighter soup. Another nearby option: Mitae Ramen makes a very light, vegetable-rich, soy sauce flavored Tokyo ramen. Mitae is probably my least favorite because of my bias for rich, porky soup, but for you - I’ll go and report back. Stay tuned as Ramen Week continues…

Oki Doki
3033 S. Bristol St. #O
(SW corner of Paularino)
Costa Mesa, CA
714-540-2066

Above: chashu ramen

The world of difference between instant ramen and real ramen is like the gap between great homemade chicken soup and canned condensed: it’s hard to appreciate either until you’ve had both.

My favorite in Southern California is Fountain Valley’s Shinsen Gumi (SSG), which specializes in a murky, pork-rich tonktosu soup. Ramen shops that offer tonkotsu soup on their menu in addition to soy and miso soups (*cough*…Ebisu, a half mile from SSG) most likely cheat by adding a commercial tonkotsu base to their all-purpose broth. Shinsen Gumi offers only this style of soup, and does it better than anyone in these parts.

SSG names their ramen after Hakata, a Kyushu port city. Their unique broth takes 15 hours to make by vigorously boiling bones, meat, and vegetables, rendering a richly murky, flavorful base the color of Mom’s pork chops. A secret-recipe soup flavoring is added to this broth, to your liking: light, regular, or strong.

Customize your ramen further at SSG. Kyushu soup is slicked with pork fat, and SSG lets you select how much you want. The noodles will be cooked to your spec: soft, regular, or firm. I order firm, because they’ll continue to cook in the bowl. Their extra thin noodles have an elastic resilience that please the teeth.

The standard ramen comes topped with chopped scallions, red julienned ginger, and a slice of chashu, Japanese roast pork. There’s a dozen additional toppings to choose from. Add extra pork, a hard boiled egg, bamboo shoots, nori, butter, or get a dollop of spicy miso on the side. This Korean influenced chili paste packs a lot of heat. Although I love spicy foods, the spicy miso overwhelms the delicious soup.

You can get an extra serving of noodles for 95 cents. For the stunt eater / frat boy set: men who can finish six extra helpings and women that polish off five get their extras for free.

Above: gyoza comes with the “A” set lunch

Lunch combos cost less than $8. The same items at dinner will run a lot more. Choose from several excellent sides, notably the gyoza: one-bite garlicky potstickers expertly cooked with a crispy crust. Dipped in a mix of soy, vinegar and chili oil, gyoza goes with ramen like strippers with rock stars.

I love the Spam musubi: a Hawaiian mom might pack this for lunch. A teriyaki-grilled slice of Spam between two layers of steamed rice, and wrapped with seaweed. These sounded wrong to me at first, but they’re delicious! Arrive early, because these sell out quickly. Other sides such as fried rice or salad are competent, but unexceptional.

SSG is part of a Gardena-based group of restaurants that offer Japanese specialties not found in your typical sushi / teppan shop. The Fountain Valley location has the ramen shop, and an adjoining restaurant that offers grilled Japanese pub foods called robatayaki – be advised to choose the right storefront. The exceptionally delicious (and fairly pricy) charcoal-grilled fare and sake selection at SSG merits its own review; watch for that in a future story.

Shin-Sen-Gumi Hakata Ramen
18315 Brookhurst St. Ste 1
(Across the parking lot from the Rite Aid)
Fountain Valley, CA
714-962-8971