Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

fish and chips is more probably more 'cult' in the uk than ramen is in japan

"cult" seems to be used to describe anything/everything.

our local "cult" cinema club showed Die Hard last week

It was on cult telly last night

real heads no the score about forgotten classics of modern cinema

Ramen is obviously not inherently "cult" in Japan but the ultra-high-end stuff arguably might be.

yeah but that's like describing wine as cult because some people spend hundreds on rare burgundies even if 90% of the time it's just cheap intoxicant

i think this is clearly the lesser of two evils compared to the use of 'punk rock' as an adjective in food writing

agree that's terrible tho it didn't seem as surprising or unusual

xp True on both counts. I guess if they're talking specifically about high-end stuff like Tonkatsu it makes a certain sense though.

I guess you get ramen that's explicitly "gourmet" and sold at higher prices, e.g. tonkotsu made with kagoshima kurobuta, or kaisen ramen w/ lobster or whatever in it, but that still doesn't feel 'cult'. just... luxury. 'A bowl of ramen made with the most ridiculously expensive ingredients' is the kind of thing that celebrities get for winning some kind of silly game on a variety show (one variation on the game: 'guess the price of this dish')? Does not read "cult" to me.

ps tonkatsu is pork 'cutlets' (i.e. breaded/fried), tonkotsu is pork-bone broth.

Like, you could argue for the existence of a coffee cult, centring on those places in tokyo that use amazing lab-equipment-lookin glass monstrosities to produce coffee or the perfect brewing and drinking temperature. But to the best of my knowledge there isn't that sort of culture around ramen -- there's just the usual sense of places that are better than others, places that are more expensive, places that are more 'authentic', places that are more experimental, etc etc etc.

* coffee at the perfect, etc

It's not necessarily luxury, it's more a veneration of expert method, i think. There are star ramen chefs in Japan that aren't necessarily the most expensive and might just use regular ingredients but still have people travelling hundreds of miles to eat at their restaurants. I get the impression that Tonkotsu is being talked about as a UK variation on that theme.

That style of ramen is arguably "cult" in Japan and more justifiably described as "cult" in the US and UK. If you get an entire Lucky Peach edition dedicated to hunting down niche "ramen gods" it indicates it carries that kind of cache.

greatest offender in the use of "punk" to describe food & drink are surely Brewdog. the beer is great but this is the label for their "Punk IPA":

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_dPvDDO8DKjo/SQCcfARAAaI/AAAAAAAAB-o/uLTq2LC7EcQ/s400/punk+ipa4.JPG

This beer, handcrafted on a busy Camden corner one Saturday afternoon, will seek you out and fight you if you so much as conform.

you non-punk-wock sheeple will never understand our bonkers crazy revolutionary beer!

- Bob Marley

It's the phrase "this rebellious little beer" that reveals the Innocent Smoothie twee kid behind the snarling punk posturing. Bobby Gillespie IPA more like.

i am so ashamed of all brewdog's marketing, logos, social media campaigns, and even the design of their bars.

this is hard because i fucking love their beer and think their success is an absolutely brilliant thing. maybe the dumb marketing is why they're so big - they do support other smaller breweries too.

xpost that's exactly it, i've always thought it's the reverse innocent smoothie. proof if you ever needed it that "anti-spin" and "spin" are two sides of the same coin.

i rip the labels off when i drink it in case someone thinks i identify as a punk.

#nonemorepunk

What blows my mind about Punk IPA has always been its aggressiveness. It's a taste that's existed in my brain since before I can remember, like the Mario theme or the Crossfire commercial. What's so spectacular about this beer is that it's not a lowest common denominator which almost no beer even begins to touch (besides Sunny Day Real Estate). The reason no one touches it is because we just don't care if you like it or not.

They are a load of wacky student* dicks with a dreadful brand, a couple of genuinely nice beers, a few so-so beers and a load of irritating stunt shit. But their wacky marketing is definitely a part of their success, people lap that shit up.

*In spirit if not literally.

yeah I love the beer too, but the stripped warehouse look of the bars and general insufferable posturing is all very tedious. Correct re. Innocent comparison, I was trying to think of how to make the link between the off-putting marketing strategies of both companies.

I might put out a Darkwave IPA where the packaging is just covered with memorably insane DJ Martian quotes.

With Brew Dog you get the feeling they should know better, as they call out a lot of the lazy misogynist small breweries on their own pump clips, but then they have their own brand which is almost as lame and lazy in a different way. They seem to have a certain generic punk rocker look for their bar staff, with fake Brewdog transfer tattoos etc. I think their beer is nearly OK as well, not as interesting as they would lead you to believe.

Mearly OK that should read.

Damnit, you know what I mean.

Luckily beer-wise a Craft Beer Co has opened just near where I work, for all my insanely strong IPA needs.

As a session beer or like, a craft brewery whose prodcts you can buy in Tesco (which they now are) I am delighted with the quality. They are nicer than all of the London pale ales for me, except Kernel.

Brewdog beer, is that?

yeah

i also like some of the seemingly gimmicky ones, they are actually good. the really strong ones like tokyo dark star are really good as an after-dinner drink if you have some mates around.

Punk IPA. I once met somebody who proudly proclaimed his life values were encapsulaed by the label copy on that beer.

John Lydon?

bloody pricey though, non?

you met mahatma gandhi?

That label works perfectly if you imagine it as read by VS Naipaul.

it still amazes me that aung san suu kyi is such a fan of punk ipa

Re Tonkotsu ramen Ronan, do you mean the place called that in Soho? I made it there for their soft launch. Great noodles and egg, but the broth was far too thin compared to the Tonkotsu I had on my trip to Japan, and which I've made a few times myself, but I got the feeling they were having some teething problems. What's it like now, and do you know any other aces which do Tonkotsu?

Places. Sorry, I'm touch screen typing today.

i took it to the london restaurants thread:

london restaurants

Boycotting Starbucks? What's the best-tasting alternative?

Where should you head if you're unhappy with the company's policy on corporation tax? Our reporter samples the options

in which the guardian send some dork to buy coffee at mcdonalds

They always smile at you in Pret. I smiled back this time, and a lady called Mia refused to charge me for the drink. I insisted. We compromised and I put the cost of the coffee into the charity box. (I'd heard that Pret do this, but it's never happened to me before. It's called a "joy giveaway", alarmingly.)

wait, really?

My colleague proudly walked into the office with her free Pret coffee just the other day.

i happened into pret yesterday and found it a bit awkward as the cashier didn't seem capable of sentences longer than two words. "take out?" "receipt?" no charming innocent-esque joy giveaways for me.

dunno how to break this to u but u got joy takeawayed blud

my tesco has been doing a 4-bottles-for-6-pounds deal of brewdog's 9% "American IPA" for what seems like months now and it has turned me into a docile addict of their product

I am pretty sure i saw Gerry Adams in Cafe Nero last week. Not sure if that boosts its leftist credentials or not.

my tesco has been doing a 4-bottles-for-6-pounds deal of brewdog's 9% "American IPA" for what seems like months now and it has turned me into a docile addict of their product

Sparky punky free-thinker, surely?

I get the impression that those people really are a wunch of bankers, fwiw. In this case iw not very much really but the point remains.