About This Site
Hi, I’m Will.  I like eating food, photographing it, and being judgmental about it.   I’ve spent roughly threee of the past eight years in Japan, where I dined out a lot.  To date, I’ve had over 160 bowls of ramen (and counting) and have pictures and opinions on all of them.  That’s the main purpose of this site.

The other purpose of this site is to provide descriptive, judgmental reviews so you don’t waste your time/money/calories.  There are a lot of outlets on the interwebs that deal with food photography and reviews.  Some of them do a fantastic job and really draw the reader in on the flavors, preparation, and stories behind each bowl; others, not so much. 

What really annoys me, though, is how few reviews actually give hard, definitive assessments of how good the dish in question is.  Far too often, any evaluations you get are generic and unspecific: 

  • “Wow, so much flavor!” Which flavors were in there? Were there too many?  Did they work together or did they clash?
  • “That was delicious!”  Why was it delicious?  Was it something about the texture that you felt on each bite, or something that the chef did with the spices?
  • “This was the bomb!”  This tells me nothing.  Your enthusiasm is great, but it tells me nothing about how it compares to the place you visited two weeks ago.
  • “Much umami, very wow!”  What does this even mean?  What gave the dish “umami,” and why was it so desirable?  Or are you just throwing out rando catchy food words?

Given the popularity of ramen, these vague statements are a disservice to those of us who want to learn more about ramen or whatever cuisine we’re about to stuff in our faces.  In addition, as someone whose time, money, and calories are increasingly valuable, I need a framework in which I can slot a particular bowl of ramen.  So I’m rating ramen by tiers: it helps put into perspective of what did/didn’t work in each bowl and why, my own taste preferences, and how each bowl compares to others. It also makes recalling and recommending a bowl to a friend much easier.

So my ramen reviews will include pictures, write-ups describing the bowl and what did/did not work, a pronouncement of what tier this bowl belongs to, and important information about prices and how long you should expect to wait.  (Queuing a huge part of the ramen scene) Tags will allow people to discover bowls by tier, ramen style, location (down to the ward-level in Tokyo), and special distinctions like Michelin recognition or kick-ass broth.  

Ordinary food photography and reviews will also be available on the site because I refuse to eat 22 bowls of ramen a week in Tokyo and because there just aren’t enough good shops in the US yet.  They won’t be ranked in tiers, but what I think of them will be clear.

So let’s begin.