The best ramen noodles in Montreal...

... is probably the one you make in the comfort of your home. Otherwise, you may head to Isakaya, Avenue du Parc, between Sherbrooke and Milton, and ask for the Japanese menu.

There are two choices of soup base for your ramen noodles: either shoyu (soya sauce) or miso (fermented beans). I look miso, while Wee had the shoyu. The obligatory piece of meat was laughable, but the rest of the ingredients made up for it quite well. It was surely the best bowl of Japanese noodles I ate in Montreal, hands down, because it was so complete compared with others I had from Japanese menus all around (Katsura, Sakura...). Of course, the piece of meat (tiny like a piece of char siu, freshly thawed from the freezer preserve) was far from the large, round thin slice of fatty pork, which I think is the norm (surely, the preparation of ramen noodles depends from a region to the other - and also, fatty pork in thin slices is perhaps not as readily in Mtl). The other components of the soup are as ordinary as it gets: (lots of) sprouted beans, a bunch of surprisingly green crisp for being in boiling soup spinach, bamboo shoots, sesame seeds floating around, scallions, a quarter of carrot... ok, it's not as impressive when you enumerate the ingredients like this.

Noodles on the Japanese menu is a bit more affordable, given that you ordinarily can't get out of Isakaya for less than $35. And we did, for $25/person, all included with sushi. $10.95 for a bowl of ramen noodles. Alas, no tonkotsu soup. Could be the next culinary experimentation?

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I bought enoki mushrooms over the weekend at Marché Hawai, Montreal's only decent size Asian supermarket (T&T still kicks its ass, both hands tied up, inside its back pocket). By proxy, my mother is going to cook sukiyaki. So, i said, well, try using sliced beef, the fried tofu, and then add those fat noodles and baby bak choy at the end. Add scallions, ginger slices, and sake or Chinese wine if you can find any.