‘The best cocktail bar ever’

http://www.phillymag.com/foobooz/2015/03/08/mystery-le-hop-sing-laundromat/

This profile of American speakeasy phenomenon Hop Sing Laundromat alights on what seems to be they key ingredient for a great cocktail bar, the quest for perfection: 

After one night of pouring drinks down the necks of the press, Lê closed Hop Sing. He wouldn’t open it again for three months.
“Wanted to fine-tune,” he says to me. To tinker and learn from the experience of his first night in order to make the next one better.

The bartenders we recently visited in Tokyo exhibit the same quality. But where Hop Sing’s quirky rules and general mystery by now seem to be there in service to publicity, those Japanese bartenders generally appear to be only motivated by the desire to make a better drink and a better experience. Some even go as far as moving to a smaller place when they feel they can’t keep up the level of service they want to deliver. Interesting contrast.  

Experiments with instant noodles

For all their popularity, and reputation as a symbol of Asia, instant noodles are actually considered a guilty pleasure, pretty much like McDonalds. This is not surprising, since the ingredients and the preparation process are not likely to be the healthiest.

Most people upgrade the noodles by adding eggs, dried fish, chicken, and or vegetables. But there is one constant, and that is the soup. The packet of spices always gets used, and the noodles are served “wet”, that is, in a soup. As a result, all the added ingredients acquire the taste of the soup, and the noodles become boring quite quickly.


ExperimentsWithInstantNoodles

Enter this recipe. It rips up the playbook and discards the spice packet. And the noodles are served dry. For taste, it uses a combination of chilli sauce and soy sauce. Add fresh herbs and an egg, and not only can you taste each individual ingredient, the also nicely balance each other in the dish. Even better, you can pretend that you’re actually eating fairly healthily.

All in all, more than enough to ensure an extended lease of life for the venerable instant noodle.