Settling the question of the best ramen

In 1958, instant noodles were invented. And so began the proliferation of ramen across the world. Commemorating this fine turn of events is a lovely Raumen (Ramen) Museum in the Tokyo suburb of Shin-Yokohama.

Inside, the ambiance is 1950s Tokyo, called the Edo period. A second floor of fake storefronts combines with a more traditional first floor food court to deliver handpicked "best of" ramen from 9 corners of Japan. Ordering is done noodle shop style, with a ticket machine out front.

We made our way through four bowls of ramen each. They were called "mini" bowls but one would satisfy a normal person for a good amount of time.

Top to bottom, you have:

Shoyu (soy sauce based) ramen (not pictured)

Dark shoyu ramen

Miso ramen

Tonkatsu (pork flavor) ramen

Miso variant ramen

The clear winner (folks, it wasn't close) was the first Miso Ramen, which had a wonderful nuttiness that made me just want to dive into the soup and eat and swim and eat. I did my best imitation of that, even though the bowl was too small...

The ramen experience left me with two insights. One, ramen and salt are good friends - don't eat four bowls of ramen unless you want to feel like you've just had a salt lick. Two, museums and food really do go together - this is a concept that should expand.

[A final note: There was an oddly large amount of New Orleans Style Gumbo Ramen for sale. Like, multiple places with big towers of cups of soup. How on earth did that come about?]