Ramen is a meal particularly suited to colder months: steaming hot bowls of salty, fatty broth and toothsome noodles are a great complement to bundled sweaters and slushy streets; less fitted are the gut-busting bowls to springtime weather and wear. Fortunately, a new pop-up in Williamsburg is set to change all that, with the introduction of mazemen, a broth-free version that's lighter but no less satisfying. more ›

Hands down, some of the best ramen in the city can be found on Fourth Avenue in Manhattan at the only American outpost of Japan's Ippudo chain. But to slurp down their noodles coated in that delicious, delicious porky broth diners often have to deal with an endless wait at a crowded bar that can stretch for well over an hour. There has to be another way, right? There is. more ›

Just because you're behind bars doesn't mean you have to forgo your favorite snack foods and electronics. Today the Post takes a look at some of the stuff for sale to prisoners on Rikers Island, finding that the number one seller is Ramen, which can be had for 35 cents. (Most prisoners discard the noodles and use the flavor packet to spice up bland jail food.) Here's what else you can pick up at the prison market: more ›

Today Frank Bruni at the Times gets around to reviewing Ippudo, the first American outpost of a popular Japanese ramen chain that opened in the East Village last year. After frequent ramen consumption at Momofuku Noodle Bar and Minca, he decides that "Ippudo’s ramen dishes—most of them, anyway—were my favorites. I appreciated Ippudo’s slender, springy house-made noodles, which manage the trick of having presence and delicacy at the same time... As the ramen slowly reveals itself, you submit completely to its spell." Bruni also compares the concessions available to the masses at Citi Field and Yankee Stadium, declaring the Mets champions of his mouth. more ›

An article in the Times today confirms that the most exciting thing to happen to food—like, ever—are the numerous cook-offs and takedowns oozing these days from the creative wellspring of Brooklyn. These events usually focus on a single ingredient or theme such as bacon, casserole, guacamole, quiche, risotto, curry, hot dogs, pork, chili, apple pie, tofu, cupcakes, ramen, or no-knead bread, for example, and hearken back to State Fair Blue Ribbon contests, where winning the peach pie contest meant you were allowed to keep the family farm. Now, as it was then, the events are a recession/depression thing, often minus some of the food-craft. Welcome to the liberal arts dustbowl. more ›

This week Frank Bruni at the Times bestows one star upon David Burke's Fishtail on the Upper East Side. He finds it both "exasperating" and "amusing...While several lines of type on the restaurant’s elaborately segmented, deeply fatiguing menu trumpet its commitment to sustainable seafood, there’s at least as high a premium on silliness, and exuberance is everything. With Mr. Burke, the trailblazing inventor of the cheesecake lollipop, that’s often the case... He’s as much showman as chef, though he’s a particular kind of showman, happy to act the clown, eager to play the prankster. You get the sense that if, at some pivotal juncture in his past, he had been handed a microphone instead of a spatula, he’d be doing stand-up now." more ›

Everyone is going apeshit over soup. Even Restaurant Girl is clamoring for chowder’s moment. Earlier this week she reviewed Bussaco, a new Park Slope spot: "Eating the crab chowder at Bussaco makes me wonder why chowder isn't more popular," she writes. "Was there a chowder trend? Did I miss it? Why don't we have one now?" Crab chowder with “Old Bay puffs" is $14 at Bussaco (dinner only).
• At 6 o'clock on the dot last Saturday night, the line at Brooklyn dumpling HQ Eton looked like the buildup outside of an Engelbert Humperdinck concert. Eton has officially put away its shaved ice (or "shave ice," according to people who have been to Hawaii) contraptions and brought on noodle soups for the winter. $12 buys you a quart of soy-laced broth filled with knobby, spätzle-like noodles and a hunk of braised short rib on top.
• For a blowout media preview the week before last that would have effectively put an end to all food restaurant blogs in NYC if everyone in the place had been kidnapped, Ippudo unveiled six seasonal ramen soups, including Tiger Tan Tan Men, which was excellent, and is seen here: a big bowl of rich, tasty pork broth stirred with sesame paste, smoky pork sausage bits, and fresh noodles. Lunch only throughout November; $12.
• Alex Ureña, he of the secret take-out lunch menu at Pamplona, is quietly offering two deluxe soups: Wild mushroom with goat cheese toast and crispy cremini mushrooms, for $15, and sopa de calabaza, a butternut squash soup with manchego foam and Serrano ham.

Esquire has just released a far-out video showing Momofuku chef Dave Chang and crew sitting for one hour inside a translucent ten-foot square cube. The resulting portrait, made by Chicago-based artist Lincoln Schatz, is part of an ongoing series commissioned to celebrate both Esquire’s 75th anniversary and “the most influential people of the coming decades.” Through a collage of camera feeds and permuted edits, the video installation portrait never depicts the same image sequence twice. more ›

Shigemi Kawahara, who’s known in Japan as the Ramen King, unveiled the much anticipated Ippudo last night at a press event packed with food bloggers and dozens of members of the Japanese media. The East Village ramenya is his company's first restaurant outside japan. more ›

Okay, it's freezing. Not just freezing -- bone chillingly bitter. We've been at our desk for hours now and still can't manage to fight off the chill from our morning commute. This kind of weather makes us crave warm, cozy comfort food -- hopefully at least one of these options is close enough to you for a quick dash out, or even better, to deliver to you. more ›