Japanese Comfort Food Bringing Comfort to Lincoln, Nebraska
Ramen, the real Japanese street food, not the dehydrated bricks of bland noodles purchased at Walmart for pennies and eaten by starving college students nationwide, is very difficult to find in cities without an established Asian community or Chinatown.
Luckily for us, Lincoln, Nebraska has a small establishment that serves some of the best Ramen noodles around: AmuManu Ramen Bar. The menu is simple. It serves 9 different Ramen styled dishes, ranging from a standard Tonkotsu (Pork) broth, with pork belly slices, noodles and vegetables, to cold soba noodles with dipping sauce. Their menu has something for everyone’s tastes.
Today, I had the Tonkotsu Ramen: creamy pork broth, tender ramen noodles, vegetables, and four thick cuts of melt in your mouth pork belly. I paid extra to add a shot of Black Garlic oil, and the result was something amazing. The creaminess of the broth, mixed with the Garlic oil, and the noodles left my mouth feeling a taste sensation only to be described as “umami”. The pork belly was delicious, and I ate every single last morsel of the soup.
My wife had the Shoyu Ramen: Soy sauce based soup with chicken, vegetables and their delicious noodles. The soup was saltier, but definitely highlighted the differences between two(of many) different styles of Japanese Ramen. The serving was of a decent size, and I got to finish her leftovers!
We also tried both of the dumplings, pork and vegetarian, and both were delicious. However, we found the pork dumplings to be more flavorful than the vegetable ones, but honestly, if you are a vegetarian, these aren’t bad at all! The pickled bamboo shoots, and pickled cabbage are a bargain at $.50 I love pickles, so these were a special treat to me.
I ordered their Cucumber Lemonade, which was surprisingly delicious. The subtle flavor of the cucumber really was heightened by the lemon’s sour flavor. I’m going to try to make this at home because it was so good.
Ashley and I agreed, that it was worth the 45 minute drive from Omaha, and that the central location in downtown Lincoln, easily makes it a surprisingly good dining establishment.
Bottom Line: Prices are low, and the taste is huge. Go hungry, and experience why people in Japan line up for hours to get a “Bowl of noodles”. One of Nebraska’s hidden gems.
