Hellooooo everyone! I hope you are all doing well, especially people affected by Harvey, Irma, or fires. You are all in my thoughts right now. Tell me how I can help!

Today’s post is about ramen. First of all, I love noodles in almost every form but I have an ridiculous amount of affection for noodles in broth, like udon or ramen. Then Cobalt and I watched Tampopo, a Japanese western movie about ramen (yes you read that right), and now we are on a mission to eat as much ramen as possible.

We even made our own ramen to eat while we watched Tampopo! It was okay. We still have much to learn….

Moving on!

So the other weekend, when we were driving to Glacier National Park, we had to drive through Spokane, Washington. It was around lunch time when we hit the city so we decided to stop and grab some food. Two ramen places popped up on Yelp: NUDO Ramen House and King of Ramen. Who knew Spokane had such tasty ramen options? Because we were going to drive back through Spokane in a few days later, we decided to try one ramen place on the way there and the other ramen place on the way back. Then we could compare the two places and I could practice my on-the-go (read: with an iPhone, not a DSLR) food photography.

Conclusion: Though both places were pretty delicious, it appears that King of Ramen really is King, at least with this current dataset (once a scientist, always a scientist).

The breakdown:

We started with King of Ramen (photo up there!).
This one felt more like an authentic ramen shop. It had all these small pots for the noodles in the kitchen, which was separated from the restaurant with cute curtains and a bar. They had a variety of tasty ramen and curry options on the menu. Cobalt ended up ordering something spicy while I went with the vegetarian option. We also got some fried tofu and I got an iced green tea. The tofu was fried to perfection: crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle. It was tasty on its own or as an addition to our ramen. Also my tea was yummy too. But the ramen itself felt like something was lacking in the broth and/or my soup was missing a key ingredient. Not sure what though. We’ll have to come back and try it again!

Oh and also we have to go back so I can try the curry because I love Japanese curry.

On the way back, we stopped at NUDO.

This restaurant is definitely more “hipster-y.” It had ramen-themed pop art on the walls and it just had a cool, sleek interior that seemed to be catering to the millennial crowd (as a millennial, I think I’m allowed to say this). Even the bathrooms were fancy – they had weird sinks.

Okay okay the ramen, Potassium, the ramen. So this time we both ordered a beef ramen and also got spring rolls. The beef ramen was good – the meat was tender and the broth was really flavorful. Plus I liked the bok choy in my soup! The noodles weren’t as good as King of Ramen’s noodles. And there was no egg in my ramen, which was sad because eggs in ramen are the best.

NUDO had one other problem: our waitress pretty much completely ignored us. Not like I need to be entertained by my waitstaff, but it’s nice when someone refills your water. Or at least brings you a carafe so you can refill your own water. I just wanted water! Plus she was so engrossed in a conversation with the only other patrons of the restaurant, that she didn’t even bring us our check. Some other server had to bring it to us. And then he asked us if we wanted to pay together or separate, which we thought was weird, considering it was only the two of us, and not a group. Is it weird? Discuss below.

One last thing. It was insanely smoky here last week (you can even tell that the light is off in that NUDO picture). The smoke was so thick that it felt more like we were eating the air instead of just breathing it in. Not great. But it’s cleared up a little and I even managed to catch a pic of Sunday night’s sunset. I’ll end this post with that.