While this rice bowl ($9.95) from Chinatown’s Strings Ramen isn’t the greatest thing since sliced Wagyu, it helps illustrate a point about Japanese food: It can be so delightfully weird. Weird, though, is a relative term. I could describe this as sea urchin, shredded crab rice, with Japanese Kewpie mayonnaise in every bite and you think, “Okaaaaay.” Or, view this as a deconstructed maki roll, a zero-textured, ultra-rich bowl of all creamy mouthfeel. (Then there’s the coddled egg, which oozes yolk to push the unctuousness to code red.) And I kind of like it, in the same way my brain tells me I should go ahead and finish the entire quart of ice cream.
Strings Ramen
2141 S. Archer Ave.
312-374-3450
ramenchicago.com
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