First Take: Menya Noodle Bar

Well, it's here-- Belmar's first ramen joint, Menya.

I've spent a good portion of my adult life looking for a really good bowl of ramen. For a couple of years in my twenties, I roamed the streets of Pusan, South Korea, looking for spicy ramen with lots of kimchi. This was street ramen, served up in thin metal bowls outside the university gates, cheap and filling.

Later I got to try the ramen in Japan, where the dish has a more subtle broth and the noodles are garnished with colorful vegetables topped with pork belly. The best was at a little noodle shop in Nagasaki, whose name I couldn't even read, where the bowls were slurped by lunchtime patrons seated at creaky wooden stools in front of a long, linoleum counter.

And can I talk about all the great ramen in Hawaii? I've gotten to eat at high-end concept ramen joints like Lucky Belly and local favorites like Kiwami Ramen.

So when I moved back to Denver, it was only natural that I started looking for ramen here, too. For years, the only place I liked was Oshima Ramen, the Denver franchise of the Japanese chain founded by Keiji Oshima, and dedicated (according to the sign when you walked in) to the "God of Ramen."

These days, with so many ramen places to choose from, I have two favorites: Ototo on S. Pearl Street in Denver, and Miyako Ra-men Spot on S. Broadway in Englewood. Ototo, owned by the same folks who run the infinitely glorious Sushi Den, serves up some of the best spicy ramen I've ever eaten. It's house-made, with a fatty, almost creamy broth that's positively decadent. Miyako's broth is almost as rich, but they get the spicy part down perfectly. Their heat reminds me of the ramen I used to get in Korea.

All of which brings me to Menya, downtown Lakewood's new ramen shop. And the truth is, I'm extremely hesitant to review it, having only been there once.

When I went in recently, I ordered a bowl of their house ramen, and found the broth rich and the pork belly as meltable as butter. Impressively, my bowl had a perfectly soft-boiled egg (many ramen shops mess this up) that was a delight to cut into. The only thing I didn't much like was the use of raw baby spinach as a garnish-- it was just too taken-out-of-the-plastic-bag for me. I'd have loved to see it wilted with a little sesame oil, or else replaced with something like bok choy. But honestly, I'm not an expert on regular ramen. What I like is Korean-influenced spicy ramen. And even then, I'm hardly an expert. All I know is what I like.

Menya has spicy ramen on the menu, but I was little surprised to see that it was a spicy chicken ramen, which is something I've never seen before. It was so surprising that I decided to hold off trying it until my next visit. Which means I'm going to hold off on any judgements until I've had a chance to try their take on spicy.

Meanwhile, I was recently downtown and passed by Menya's 16th Street Mall location, and it was packed at noon, so there's apparently a large group of people for whom Menya hits the spot.

Will Menya Belmar end up on my list of regular downtown Lakewood lunchtime spots? Time will tell, but it's a promising start.