Best dishes countdown #2: Ramen at Ramen Kazama
The pursuit of perfection.
Highly specialized cooking is a blessing and a curse for all involved. For the chef it means painstaking hours in the pursuit of perfection, allowing for no corner-cutting and no fuck-ups.
For the customer, it means endless lines and endless restrictions: no reservations, walk-in seating only, no takeout menu, parties limited to four and under.
But still the specialists specialize, and still we line up.
Though we're a real, live, grownup food city, the Twin Cities still has precious few culinary specialists, those folks who do very little, but do it extremely well. Ramen Kazama is one of those specialists.
The broths take many precious hours to get right, and naturally there is no shortcut for coaxing gelatin, marrow, and connective tissue from bones. The result is profound and medicinal, with deep and fatty cutlets bobbing about meatily.
Noodles are a gold standard brand, Myojo, imported from Japan. A soft egg stares up at you like an approving eye.
And that's it. Which is the same as saying: That's everything.
Ramen Kazama
3400 Nicollet Ave. S., Minneapolis
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