Eric Tadsen
Ramen Station's spicy, chili-like gyuniku ramen.
It’s time to accept a simple truth: Ramen is a thing now. It’s pizza. It’s tacos. It’s cheeseburgers, man. And if all you know about ramen is the 25-cent grocery store brick, it’s time to tear open the flavor pouch of real ramen.
I’m not trying to be the cultural authenticity police. But there is a more traditional style of ramen than the dry stuff, with carefully prepared broth, slow-cooked egg and a combination of vegetables like sprouts, bamboo shoots and seaweed. The terms you’ll see on every ramen menu describe the flavor base of the broths. Tonkotsu (pork bone) and miso (fermented soybean) are the big two, and usually the most intense. Shoyu (soy sauce) and shio (salt) are a little milder, but with their own unique charms.
Locally, Umami, Sujeo and others have familiarized Madison with this style. And now two new ramen joints, Ramen Kid and Ramen Station, prove that the noodle has become more than a trend.
Ramen Kid on West Gilman Street has a street art vibe to match the youthfulness of its between-two-Hubs neighborhood. The staff is young, the crowd is young, the tunes are primarily hip-hop. Business hours run until 10 p.m. six nights a week — not late enough to be a bar-time sop, but not so early that it can’t accommodate diners who are in the middle of a night on the town.
The menu at Ramen Kid has a few starters and a limited number of ramen bases and combinations. Chicken karaage is a welcome presence and is unexpectedly juicy for nuggets of fried white meat. But overall the dish is bland, with no evidence of its hallmark marinade.
Takoyaki are also offered, but if you’re not hardcore craving these creamy fritters with bits of octopus inside, the too-chewy meat will probably disappoint.
I found the broth bases lacking in depth, with only the butter corn variant of the basic miso ramen to be as potent as it should be. It was a wildly flavorful, if too salty, bowl. Sweet, bready, funky notes called to mind a big barleywine ale.
Tonkotsu was less impressive and poorly emulsified (the best tonkotsu broths are opaque, with fats, solids and water all smoothly incorporated), and ordering it spicy didn’t save it. A scoop of the kind of ground pork you might find in Sichuan dan-dan noodles only made the pork broth base seem oilier.
Shio ramen was probably the most enjoyable bowl, with few obvious weaknesses aside from the lack of ocean saltiness and no seaweed. If you’ve had Sujeo’s shio ramen, you wouldn’t recognize Ramen Kid’s as the same style.
Still, Ramen Kid is fun. You can order a bowl of tonkotsu ramen with gyoza in it, sort of like the Campbell’s wonton soup of my childhood. The soft-cooked egg is superbly done, and almost makes up for the overcooked sliced pork. If nothing else, I’ve come to love hanging out on this stretch of Gilman (in part because of the Wiener Shop). Ramen Kid fits right in.
Ramen Station has turned an old Cousins Subs into a charming little dining room, and it sits on South Park Street, long a focal point of Madison’s multicultural dining scene.
While the atmosphere is a little more formal than at Ramen Kid, there’s still plenty of hip-hop beats and millennial diners. Ramen Station is open until 10:30 p.m. during the week and 11 p.m. on weekends because, seriously, late-night ramen rules.
What Ramen Station offers over any other noodle joint in town are a couple of unusual ramen stylings. Take gyuniku ramen: a spicy beef base oddly reminiscent of chili, which delivers a modest bump of heat without making things uncomfortable.
Good old tonkotsu, meanwhile, is a touch smoother and more emulsified than at Ramen Kid, but could still use deeper flavor development. The slices of braised pork, however, were lovely. Though slightly mushy on one visit, the meat was tender and ringed with luxurious fat.
That pork rescued an otherwise unremarkable bowl of shoyu ramen, proving that one of Ramen Station’s strengths is its ability to season and prepare meats. A side menu of izakaya-style skewers includes smoky chicken thighs, a bundle of chewy enoki mushrooms wrapped in crisped bacon, and hefty shell-on shrimp served with their heads, tails and legs — and a lot of salt, perfect for licking off your fingers.
The chicken karaage (thigh meat this time) had all the flavor that Ramen Kid’s was lacking, but couldn’t quite bring the crunch I was after.
Curry rice with pork katsu (a pounded, breaded chop) was mild, as Japanese curry typically is, but was properly seasoned and cooked — pure comfort food.
At both restaurants, I sat near diners young and old fiddling with chopsticks, deep in conversations about ramen traditions, international cuisine and stretching culinary horizons. Not once did I hear someone complain about how a bowl of ramen shouldn’t cost more than a buck.
There is better ramen in Madison than at Ramen Kid and Ramen Station, but put your face over a steaming bowl of noodles and broth and inhale its history, feel the work that went into preparing it. Even an okay ramen can still transport you.
Ramen Kid
461 W. Gilman St., 608-467-7387, ramenkidmadison.com, 11 am-2:30 pm and 5-10 pm Mon.-Fri., 11 am-10 pm Sat., 11 am-9 pm Sun., $4-$11, Accessibility: One step up into the building.
Ramen Station
1124 S. Park St., 608-819-8918, ramenstationmadison.com, 11 am-2:30 pm and 4:30-10:30 pm Mon.-Thurs., 11 am-2:30 pm and 4:30-11 pm Fri.-Sat., noon-10 pm Sun.,$3-$13
