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The border wall not built by Trump
Cooking Seoul Street instant noodles is easy, picking them out is the challenge
Customers make their own instant noodles, picked out from the wall of ramyun packages
Video:
FEAST!: The border wall not built by Trump
The wall of instant noodles confounds me at first. Not because I can't reach the top shelf—though I can't—but because there's over a hundred ramen options looking back at me, and I don't know how to choose. All the time I've spent dining out at San Diego restaurants has not prepared me to pick out a package of instant ramen.
Or, technically, ramyun, because these noodles all represent Korean noodle brands. The shop I'm in is called Seoul Street, and it can be found at the Las Americas Premium Outlets mall—at the eastern end, no more than 500 feet from the border crossing to Mexico.
I catch myself calling it a shop, like I won't let myself call it a restaurant. Because I think of restaurants as places where cooks prepare food. At Seoul Street, customers pick out their noodles, pay at the counter, then make the food themselves, with the help of a nifty, automatic hot water dispenser.
What truly baffles me is the concept is working. A package of self-made ramyun noodles goes for $7.99, and I found a line out the door. It's tough to say whether customers had just crossed the border, were about to cross the border, or merely got hungry while shopping. Whatever the case, my bilingual cashier confirms: the shop, which opened in October, stays busy all day, lunch through dinner.
Diners eat noodles they made themselves, at Seoul Street in the Las Americas Premium Outlets mall
When I first heard about Seoul Street, I had cynical questions about an eating establishment that specializes in instant noodles. Like, Is this nihilism at work? Post-pandemic resignation? Is this an elaborate study to test the limits of capitalism?
But I've picked up on a few things since that have won me over. The first being that, since my instant ramen eating heyday (also known as my late teens) advancements in food technology have significantly improved the quality of instant noodles. Not only regarding the noodles themselves, but the flavor packets. So, while I recall powder packets laden with little more than MSG and salt, today's instant noodle packs often feature two or three different packets, separating powders, pastes, and/or dehydrated meats and vegetables.
A recommended package of Shin Black ramen, and the resulting noodles with toppings added
I learned this from a timely New York Times piece, which also highlighted a few of the top, "top ramens" in the world, out of literal hundreds. I kept this article at hand while navigating Seoul Street's wall of instant noodles: eight rows of shelves as many as 20 columns wide.
Fortunately, I bumped into the shop's owner, Sang Kim. Originally from Seoul, Kim has been living out here the past 20 years: Here meaning both sides of the border, Tijuana and Chula Vista. He's a mechanical engineer by trade, who emigrated to work for companies including LG and Hyundai.
Kim wanted to try something new with his career, and though restaurants interested him, he reasoned that mechanical engineering success didn't exactly give him any expertise in the kitchen. However, he does know how to recognize good gear.
A hot water machine set up specifically to make instant noodles
Consider me living proof that the hot water dispensers set up along the counter at Seoul Street are idiot proof. The shop's cardboard bowls drop right into a mold to hold them in place. You simply add the contents of the instant noodle packet, push a button, and watch the bowl fill with the proper amount of boiling water. All you really need to do is stir the noodles occasionally as they soften, until a built-in timer counts down to zero and lets you know they're ready to eat. I felt nearly the same sense of accomplishment doing this as the six-year-old making her own lunch next to me.
What Seoul Street really does, as far as food prep, is provide a variety of toppings for your noodles. Free toppings include cilantro, green onions, and jalapeños. For a buck apiece you can add the likes of a hard-boiled egg, a raw egg, spam slices, fish cakes, or cheese. If you're hungrier than that, the shop offers bowls of rice, kimchi, pickled daikon radish, and either gimbap or dumplings, which may be heated in a microwave in the corner.
Kim also clued me in how the noodles are organized. Generally speaking, the spicier options go up top, while milder flavors are placed closer to the bottom shelves. On the left you have traditional, soupy noodles, then as you look toward the center you'll find thicker noodles, and to the right are the so-called stir-fry style instant noodles, which result in drier ramyun. There are even corresponding buttons on the hot water machines to account for the differences: soup based, thick noodle, and stir fried.
This helped me browse, but I still hung with my New York Times tutorial to help me decide. The best-known and most reliable brands seem to be Shin and Buldak, which each feature multitudes of flavors, styles, and spice levels, and sometimes a choice between fried and air-dried noodles.
An order of ramyun, served still in its packageat the counter, with a bowl and toppings on the side
I tried out the Shin Black variety recommended by the Times, which boasted beef bone broth and dehydrated beef and mushrooms. For toppings I added spam, boiled egg, rice cakes, and green onions. Without doubt, these noodles were far better, and more flavorful, than I remember from my broke-ass college days.
Better still was a recent viral sensation: Buldak spicy chicken carbonara. Sometime last fall, these instant noodles in a pink package apparently became famous on TikTok, and promptly sold out all over the place. I watched Kim restock this flavor a couple times, as it seemed to be most popular during my visit. When I tried it, with corn and the recommended mozzarella cheese toppings, I could tell why. One of the drier, stir fry style options, it's got thick, curly noodles that wind up coated in a thick, spicy, somewhat carbonara-like sauce, truly made better with the melting cheese.
Kim also gave me a preview of Seoul Street's next step: signature noodle dishes, prepared in the kitchen. Slowly but surely, this unique borderland shop is becoming a restaurant.
Here's something you might be interested in.
The border wall not built by Trump
Cooking Seoul Street instant noodles is easy, picking them out is the challenge
The border wall not built by Trump
Cooking Seoul Street instant noodles is easy, picking them out is the challenge
Customers make their own instant noodles, picked out from the wall of ramyun packages
Video:
FEAST!: The border wall not built by Trump
The wall of instant noodles confounds me at first. Not because I can't reach the top shelf—though I can't—but because there's over a hundred ramen options looking back at me, and I don't know how to choose. All the time I've spent dining out at San Diego restaurants has not prepared me to pick out a package of instant ramen.
Or, technically, ramyun, because these noodles all represent Korean noodle brands. The shop I'm in is called Seoul Street, and it can be found at the Las Americas Premium Outlets mall—at the eastern end, no more than 500 feet from the border crossing to Mexico.
I catch myself calling it a shop, like I won't let myself call it a restaurant. Because I think of restaurants as places where cooks prepare food. At Seoul Street, customers pick out their noodles, pay at the counter, then make the food themselves, with the help of a nifty, automatic hot water dispenser.
What truly baffles me is the concept is working. A package of self-made ramyun noodles goes for $7.99, and I found a line out the door. It's tough to say whether customers had just crossed the border, were about to cross the border, or merely got hungry while shopping. Whatever the case, my bilingual cashier confirms: the shop, which opened in October, stays busy all day, lunch through dinner.
Diners eat noodles they made themselves, at Seoul Street in the Las Americas Premium Outlets mall
When I first heard about Seoul Street, I had cynical questions about an eating establishment that specializes in instant noodles. Like, Is this nihilism at work? Post-pandemic resignation? Is this an elaborate study to test the limits of capitalism?
But I've picked up on a few things since that have won me over. The first being that, since my instant ramen eating heyday (also known as my late teens) advancements in food technology have significantly improved the quality of instant noodles. Not only regarding the noodles themselves, but the flavor packets. So, while I recall powder packets laden with little more than MSG and salt, today's instant noodle packs often feature two or three different packets, separating powders, pastes, and/or dehydrated meats and vegetables.
A recommended package of Shin Black ramen, and the resulting noodles with toppings added
I learned this from a timely New York Times piece, which also highlighted a few of the top, "top ramens" in the world, out of literal hundreds. I kept this article at hand while navigating Seoul Street's wall of instant noodles: eight rows of shelves as many as 20 columns wide.
Fortunately, I bumped into the shop's owner, Sang Kim. Originally from Seoul, Kim has been living out here the past 20 years: Here meaning both sides of the border, Tijuana and Chula Vista. He's a mechanical engineer by trade, who emigrated to work for companies including LG and Hyundai.
Kim wanted to try something new with his career, and though restaurants interested him, he reasoned that mechanical engineering success didn't exactly give him any expertise in the kitchen. However, he does know how to recognize good gear.
A hot water machine set up specifically to make instant noodles
Consider me living proof that the hot water dispensers set up along the counter at Seoul Street are idiot proof. The shop's cardboard bowls drop right into a mold to hold them in place. You simply add the contents of the instant noodle packet, push a button, and watch the bowl fill with the proper amount of boiling water. All you really need to do is stir the noodles occasionally as they soften, until a built-in timer counts down to zero and lets you know they're ready to eat. I felt nearly the same sense of accomplishment doing this as the six-year-old making her own lunch next to me.
What Seoul Street really does, as far as food prep, is provide a variety of toppings for your noodles. Free toppings include cilantro, green onions, and jalapeños. For a buck apiece you can add the likes of a hard-boiled egg, a raw egg, spam slices, fish cakes, or cheese. If you're hungrier than that, the shop offers bowls of rice, kimchi, pickled daikon radish, and either gimbap or dumplings, which may be heated in a microwave in the corner.
Kim also clued me in how the noodles are organized. Generally speaking, the spicier options go up top, while milder flavors are placed closer to the bottom shelves. On the left you have traditional, soupy noodles, then as you look toward the center you'll find thicker noodles, and to the right are the so-called stir-fry style instant noodles, which result in drier ramyun. There are even corresponding buttons on the hot water machines to account for the differences: soup based, thick noodle, and stir fried.
This helped me browse, but I still hung with my New York Times tutorial to help me decide. The best-known and most reliable brands seem to be Shin and Buldak, which each feature multitudes of flavors, styles, and spice levels, and sometimes a choice between fried and air-dried noodles.
An order of ramyun, served still in its packageat the counter, with a bowl and toppings on the side
I tried out the Shin Black variety recommended by the Times, which boasted beef bone broth and dehydrated beef and mushrooms. For toppings I added spam, boiled egg, rice cakes, and green onions. Without doubt, these noodles were far better, and more flavorful, than I remember from my broke-ass college days.
Better still was a recent viral sensation: Buldak spicy chicken carbonara. Sometime last fall, these instant noodles in a pink package apparently became famous on TikTok, and promptly sold out all over the place. I watched Kim restock this flavor a couple times, as it seemed to be most popular during my visit. When I tried it, with corn and the recommended mozzarella cheese toppings, I could tell why. One of the drier, stir fry style options, it's got thick, curly noodles that wind up coated in a thick, spicy, somewhat carbonara-like sauce, truly made better with the melting cheese.
Kim also gave me a preview of Seoul Street's next step: signature noodle dishes, prepared in the kitchen. Slowly but surely, this unique borderland shop is becoming a restaurant.
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