Peaches and pigs’ feet. That’s the secret. Or, at least, part of it, anyway. I’m referring to the ambrosial broth at Toki Underground. That alluring aroma tickles your nose hairs the moment you ascend the stairs, wooing you onward to the jovial host with the clipboard, where the fragrance reveals itself to be a cruel, [...]

Back in Broth: Longtime Young & Hungry fave Ren's Ramen, formerly of Bethesda, has re-opened in Wheaton. “I think this is a nice place,” owner Yoko Nakamura says of the new 1,250-square-foot location at 11403 Amherst Avenue. “It’s pretty close to the Metro station.” Y&H alum Tim Carman provides a tantalizing photo from the scene. [...]

Bethesda magazine delivers some very good news for lovers of good soup. Ren's Ramen, which shut its doors in Bethesda last year because of increasing rent, has relocated to Wheaton. This should make Tim Carman, who has professed his adoration for Ren's, very happy. As he wrote for Young & Hungry at the time: As [...]

Arianne Bennett and Greggory Hill For Scott and myself, who have been married 19 years now, our early lives were populated with eating indulgences that were lesser-known spots in DC... Fio's (that was in the Woodner on 16th), with its amazing Italian food...  it was a real gem that always served squid-ink pasta... it was [...]

This week's Young & Hungry column plumbs the depths of my despair over the pending closure of Ren's Ramen in Bethesda. As part of the column, I asked a number of chefs, restaurateurs, and writers to share their own stories about beloved eateries that have bit the dust. Some of the stories, unfortunately, didn't make [...]

Editor's note: Ren's Ramen's closing date has been pushed back to Sept. 3. Love it or hate it, David Chang’s ramen has to be the most fussed-over bowl of soup in the entire goddamn U.S. of A. The chef devoted more than 15 pages to building the perfect ramen in his debut cookbook, Momofuku, right [...]

The news has been long speculated, but now it's true: The area's best Japanese noodle shop, Ren's Ramen, will close on Friday, August 20. Owners Yoko and Eiji Nakamura had been subletting their tiny space from Daruma Japanese Market, but when the market closed earlier this year, the couple negotiated a month-by-month lease with the [...]

 One of the recurring complaints about Ren's Ramen in Bethesda, which I reviewed this week in Young & Hungry, is that its soups, starting at $10 per bowl, are way too expensive. A sample quote from Ren's Yelp page: Bowls start at $10 (!) with just one slice of pork, some bean sprouts, and one leaf of [...]

In doing research yesterday on my next Young & Hungry column, this one on ramen, two people asked if I had ever seen Tampopo. I had to confess that I had not. Until last night, that is, when I sat transfixed for nearly two hours by writer-director Juzo Itami's free-association comedy about one noodle-maker's search for the [...]

The miso ramen at Ren's Ramen in Bethesda Ramen may be a Chinese import, but Japan has made the noodle all its own. The pleasures of eating true ramen soup are almost too many to catalog: the salty savory broth, the richness of the partially cooked yolk (should you add the seasoned, soft-boiled nugget), the [...]