Arnold Zwicky's Blog

On the Japan Times site on February 9th, “Say ‘I love you’ a different way with Kourakuen’s chocolate ramen” by Patrick St. Michel”:

Nothing says “I love you” like a novelty fast food dish incorporating chocolate. Ramen chain Kourakuen’s new dish, running until the end of Valentine’s Day this year, checks all those boxes. Customers can enjoy a bowl of chocolate ramen which … well, is exactly what you’d expect.

This isn’t the first time some bold chef has thought up the savory-sweet blend. Mensho’s Tokyo branches rolled out a similar dish a few years back, to strong reviews. But Kourakuen is taking it even further with this soy-sauce-based ramen, which features a hefty dose of chocolate served at a lower price point (¥561).

This ramen tastes like ramen, with the initial flavor of soy sauce coming through clearly. What follows is a chocolate aftertaste that is both surprising and surprisingly OK, albeit in a way that you never really want to experience again. Don’t build your Feb. 14 plans around this dish (please!), but if you are looking for something a bit different before then, this is a nice one-off.

Another chapter in the story of sweevory foods (sweevory being my portmanteau name for a combination of the opposed food categories SWEET and SAVORY). See my 3/29/17 posting “Another phenomenally bad idea”, on dessert hummus and other sweevories, with a section

on foods that (like dessert hummus) violate this opposition: think clams with maple syrup, or strawberry jam on prime rib.

This entry was posted on February 12, 2019 at 5:55 am and is filed under Classification and labeling, Language and food, Portmanteaus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.