On becoming human and Mu Ramen
Half way between the seven minute walk from the subway station back to my apartment, uncontrollable tears streamed down my face. I sobbed in broad day light. In my thirty-four years on earth, that had never happened before, and what triggered it was simply a portion of the podcast Invisibilia. It was the episode about how this small town in the Netherlands was trying to fight extremism and former-terrorists with super kindness. This guy who had gone to Syria but returned home talked about how he ate a waffle for the first time in a cafe frequented by white folks, and for some reason I just cried and it got to a point where I couldn’t control myself. I sat down on a stoop to catch my breath. I also looked around to make sure no one saw me, so I could preserve my manliness. But then it seemed right in the over-sharing world to blog about this. If Lulu Miller, Hanna Rosin and Alix Spiegel are out there, you ladies made me cry. Damn it!
Of course I attribute this new found familiarity with tears to the fact that my son was born. When I mentioned this to my friend Ming, who has known me since college, he said, “Congratulations, you’re human. It’s about time.” Friends.
But seeing as I’m a little crybaby, with a baby at home who sometimes cries (for getting his face wiped with a wetnap), blogging about lunch is about the only thing I can do for the blog. A couple of months ago I stopped by Mu Ramen for an extended lunch break because it had long been on my list, because they finally opened for lunch!
The prize was the opportunity to have their namesake, the Mu Ramen, which was “oxtail and bone marrow based soup, bisket, half sour pickle, menma, cabbage and scallions.” Beef ramen doesn’t seem as wide spread as the chicken or pork variety, which is why this bowl had captured my interest. The broth was complex and interesting and overall I liked the experience of the noodles. It wasn’t like it was going to make me cry because it was so good, but for ramen lovers in the NYC area, it’s definitely worth trying at least once. Now I’m going to get back to my regularly scheduled sports podcasts that induce no tears, and show my son how to be a man (in some city other than NYC… potentially).
Posted by Danny on September 12, 2016 at 10:14 pm
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