Dear Salty,

Both my wife and I work very hard and we think we deserve, nay, are entitled to blow off a lot of steam with a nice dinner out with our 14 month-old Instabook tenant.

Yet we get dirty looks (of jealousy?) wherever we go because we find it convenient to change our kid’s nappy at our table. (It’s the good…

Wow, thanks for this: there’s still quite a lot about ramen history that I don’t yet know. I’ll have to check out Taishoken and Ganja the next time I’m in Tokyo.

And agreed with your sentiment on the OP’s take on Tokyo ramen; I really don’t get where/how he’s: 1) not finding any good ramen in Tokyo; 2) finding only…

I’ve done it twice in the honten in Mita and in Yojimbo up near Todaimae, and felt sick twice—never again!

Perhaps the only way to detox you guys is to fight fire with fire: hyper-stanky niboshi?

The arguments for getting crockpot is compelling for many reasons, of which you’ve listed quite a few, but counter space is a real issue. Still need to figure out if the difference in taste justifies getting something that I’ll have to store in the pantry rather than on the kitchen counter.

Kurume is a 40-minute ride from Fukuoka, and is regarded as the OG of the Hakata/Nagahama-style tonkotsu ramen we usually associate with Fukuoka. The shops there make their broth with pig’s head and trotters to give it an deeper/muskier flavor.

Where the 60 year-old tonkotsu comes to play is that the shop I went to,…

Thanks for the suggestion—it’s on my queue, but I keep putting it off partly because I don’t have enough free time right now. 

But the other part of it is that I’m just afraid that the ramen episode is just going to turn into an ode to the ramen shop Afuri, whose yuzu-infused broth has been serenaded from everyone from…

More of a response to the OP: the chicken-shoyu bowls in Tokyo are tremendous. I’m sorry for sounding like a wannabe-Tokyoite, but the other benefit of Tokyo is that because there are just so many other cuisines and chefs who’ve trained in them, you get a lot more variations on ramen. That means bowls like a…

Admittedly I’m not a biggest fan of Hakata tonkotsu, but I didn’t read your words as bashing the style. There’s definitely an American fixation on tonkotsu and spicy miso, which is surprising because outside of Fukuoka and Sapporo, non-chain shops that do Hakata tonkotsu or miso ramen well are fairly specialized and…

Well Derrick Rose can’t do it by himself. He needs others to help him out.

Something like a team. Or a gang.

Looking to reading more from this column. I’m an enthusiastic ramen eater (150+ bowls over my years in the Kanto area), but I still feel like I can’t truly know/judge ramen until I understand how the soup is made, from the broth to the tare. I hope I’ll get a better understanding of those elements from this column so…

I love curry and I keep thinking about getting a crockpot, but I’ve already invested in two dutch ovens (3- and 6- quarts). I can make this reasonably well in a dutch oven, right?

And in case anyone is curious as to who are the luminaries of the UMD Board of Regents, here’s a link to some brief bios:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/higher-ed/bs-md-board-of-regents-20181027-story.html

Compelling and rich. But mostly rich.

Judging by all of your responses, you sure carry a lot of water for Team Banana Boat to keep it afloat. I hope they’re paying you well.

Dutch national football team.  Or for less successful teams, the Knicks and the Mets.

I hear in hell the only game that is on is Rockets-Wizards. And everyone is miked up.

When even your wife doesn’t want to touch you, much less bone you, it’s okay to dial the vanity down.

Nah, he’s definitely a dickish teammate.

There’s the Jeremy Lin backstabbing of course, but refusing to come off the bench for the Thunder and making the Knicks dump a ton of assets just so he could come to New York 4 months early are also good signs of being a dick and a bad teammate.

I’ve often visited the Callin’ Oates website ever since a woman introduced it to me in 2012. Totally worth those awkward two dates.

You’ve miscounted there.  Harden is definitely a dickish teammate.

Apologies for the effed syntax in my original post; something about this guy makes my brain short-circuit.