Akahoshi, five times
It begins, for our intents, with the book and its corresponding Reddit thread. There is a guy, and he decided to beastmode ramen to such a degree that, well, book, thread. The book should be sold and it is not because he is generous. In the process, he got so popular on Reddit that he did what any normal person with a passionate food hobby would do, and opened a restaurant.
Akahoshi, now indisputably one of the best ramen bowls in Chicago, is located two blocks from another one of the best ramen shops in Chicago, in the same neighborhood as a completely different style of ramen shop that is also stunning. Unlike those places, though, Akahoshi is so popular that refreshing for a 4-top comprehensively defeated me for two months, until one day it didn’t. I sat in shock for a few minutes, then pinged friends to fill the other seats. “Wait, is this Ramen_Lord’s place? In,” one infamously overscheduled friend replied. Reddit knows. Heads know. Search knows, too: type “ramen recipe site:reddit.com”, and you will be put in front of the book rather quickly.
Akahoshi’s menu is slim by design, because everything they make is engineered within an inch of its life: 4 bowls that are always on the menu, 1 rotated out every month, and some beverages. Other ramen shops sell gyudon, soba, bento, but no, you are there for ramen. You know the guy. Nobody just casually walks into Akahoshi. It may be in the middle of a major neighborhood center on the northwest side, but it is truly located on the internet, it is of the internet, it is an act of teaching generosity dumped into the real world and put a half-block away from the Blue Line.
Akahoshi shows you what you get when you spend your life teaching others on the internet. You are eventually rewarded for it, shown a clearer way. This remains one of the purest dynamics of the information age. I see myself in all of this, marveling at the fact that the place exists at all, wondering what points of growth I’m missing in my own practice.
Three of us order the monthly, and a fourth gets the shoyu, surmising that it represents the baseline for any good ramen shop. The shoyu, usually simple, has an opinion: it is dashi-heavy, a little on the fish side. On page 71 of his book, an explanation: the ingredients are steeped for a long time to extract as much flavor as possible.
Our monthly special is the second best bowl of ramen that I’ve ever had, after Hachigou. Pork & chicken stock, chashu, thick noodles. The stock managed to somehow be chewing-grade rich and light at the same time. I’ve never had anything like it. The four of us were gobsmacked, raving, with Ramen_Lord himself talking to us occasionally in front of our counter seats. He was an open book, happy to share everything. These parts of the recipe are easy. These parts took 20 hours. These parts are why you come here rather than making ramen at home. He spoke in the style of a Reddit commenter: friendly, helpful, careful to touch all of the bases, showing blind spots.
The four of us left, had a beer together, and went home. And then I didn’t think about going to Akahoshi much. Why bother, when getting a table was so hard? And then I realized that they were actual normal people running a normal ramen restaurant, and most of their tables were devoted to walk-ins. The hack is to show up at or near opening on a Wednesday, alone, and ask. There is seldom a wait, and when there is it’s not much. And: good. It’s ramen, y’all. Delicious, yes, but not worth fighting over, especially not when Wasabi is right there. If I ever get quoted an hour at Akahoshi, I’ll walk 10 minutes to Wasabi and be fed & out by the time my table is ready.
Within 5 visits, you’ve eaten Akahoshi’s whole menu. Two soupless bowls, two soupy bowls, all about $20 a pop. The miso lacks the butter pat or corn, and it’s all the better for it. Like the shoyu, it too is opinionated, lighting a new path, reminding us of an old path, or both. You rapidly get the felt sense that the bowls are confident, and they disappear every night because the guy behind the bar is a teacher, a real honest-to-god one, wanting everybody to know what this path looks like. We don’t get enough of that in the world, do we? Why do we collectively fail to share new visions of the future?
June’s special was tsukemen, basically cold ingredients dipped into a hot, concentrated soup. It was fine enough until I finished my dipping noodles and a server came by with extra dashi to dilute the soup stock. I got out a spoon, took one sip, and it tasted like everything I love about Japan, pure comfort food, a little spicy, savory beyond belief, balanced to a degree that feels almost embarrassing to write about, utterly transportive to the best moments I’ve had in that country; and I sat there, staring at the post office across the street, very much in America, and looked around, astonished, and everybody seemed to be having a great time like Akahoshi was a normal restaurant or something.