Strings Ramen Shop

There are a lot of solid ramen joints in Chicago, but we’ve got a thing for Strings in Chinatown.

Strings offers up four broths with multiple fillers, including vegetables, pork belly, pork loin, duck, seafood, and turkey. No matter your choice in broth or add-ons, the fresh noodles are the star, thanks to the fact that they’re made daily with a special dough and a mixer they imported from Japan, or so we’re told. But at the end it doesn’t really matter - all we really care about is that they’re really tasty.

Food Rundown

photo credit: Sandy Noto

Oden

You have a variety of choices, fish cakes, sausage, daikon, and squid.

photo credit: Sandy Noto

Tonkotsu Ramen

A bone broth with garlic oil, fresh crushed garlic, sesame seed, scallion, bamboo shoots, noodles, and option of pork (loin or belly), or pork and duck. This is both the heaviest of the broths and our favorite. We go pork belly and add the duck.

photo credit: Sandy Noto.

Shoyu Ramen

Probably the lightest broth of the bunch, clear, with soy sauce and bonito fish, served with bamboo shoots, nori, and bean sprouts. Unless you’re a vegetarian, go for the pork loin version that also comes with wasabi oil and a boiled egg.

Miso Ramen

Pork bone broth served with three types of miso, corn, scallion, bean sprout, sesame seed, chopped garlic, butter, and white pepper. Not as flavorful as it could be, but you can get the miso with snow crab, scallop, shrimp, and pork. Sometimes the addition of a little seafood trumps all.

Shio Ramen

Chicken and turkey sea salt broth with scallion, ginger, and egg. This comes with turkey in the bowl, and make sure to cap it off with a little chili oil on your table. Emphasis on only a little.