(Photo: Scott Lynch)
If you thought the ramen burger would be the last of the ramen mash-ups, think again. Miss Lily’s 7A Cafe has started serving up a (limited-edition, naturally) jerk ramen and — even more exciting? — a new Hester Street Fair vendor, Corndog Factory, is making corndogs with that stuff that kept you alive during college.
Jerk Ramen at Miss Lily’s
A kind of noodle detente has settled over much of the East Village of late, after the Great Ramen Wars of the late aughts (Momofuku vs. Setagaya vs. Ippudo vs. Minca vs. Rai Rai Ken vs. all comers) sparked a thousand righteous blog posts and left more than a few casualties in its wake.
But that doesn’t mean the neighborhood is bereft of noodle newcomers! At the Miss Lily’s 7A Cafe, chef Adam Schop recently elevated his stoner-fantasy Jerk Ramen from “maybe we’ll try this…” status to a regular weekly special. Every Monday Schop makes a big pot of the broth, and the dish stays on the menu until it runs out. And now that we’re sure to get shot down in any walk-right-in situation at Ivan Ramen (thanks, Pete Wells), Jerk Ramen may just become our early-week, go-to bowl of noodles come fall.
(Photo: Scott Lynch)
Schop makes the dish with thick and tender slices of jerk chicken, fatty pork belly, fermented ackee (Jamaica’s sweet and tangy national fruit), properly runny egg, a tangle of bitter greens, a sheet of briny seaweed, and Scotch bonnet paste (which sounds more fiery than it is, but definitely kicks in some welcome heat to the proceedings). As for the noodles, Ippudo and Ivan Ramen have nothing to worry about, getting-dethroned-wise, but the ones at Miss Lily’s are pleasantly chewy, and hold up well under fire.
Ramen corndog ball at top left. (Courtesy Hester Street)
Ramen Corndogs at Corndog Factory
When Midori Tanaka and Sung Kim launched their corndog business about a month ago, they were aiming to take the potato corndogs found in South Korea to a new level. And that they’ve done, by dipping hot dogs in batter, adding bits of uncooked ramen, and frying them to an extra crisp.
Not only that, but the corndog experimentalists are creating little corndog balls topped with ramen as well, and last week they debuted a curry corndog that will likely make an encore when Corndog Factory returns to Hester Street Fair this Saturday. If you’ve got room for desert, they also do a sweet corndog that swaps mochi for meat.
Correction: The original version of this post was fixed to correct the surname of Midori Tanaka. She doesn’t always use Top Ramen on the corndog, so we’ve removed that brand name.