Little Giant gets so-so review. Also, ramen in NYC!!

I scour the blogs of NYC (well, 4 or 5 of them) so you don't have to. Today, Curbed, albeit about 4 days behind.

The newest restaurant in my 'hood, Little Giant, on Orchard at Broome, doesn't get the most favorable of reviews (NY Press). Basically, food is so so to good, but names are just too cute for the sake of being cute. Heh. We'll see how long it survives. I'll keep y'all posted.

- Little Giant menu at menupages.com.
- Daily News was a little kinder, giving it 2.5 stars.

Also, In Search of Great Ramen (NY Times)

The difference between these richly satisfying bowls and packaged ramen, flavored mostly with MSG, is vast. "New York might never have really great ramen, just like Tokyo might never have really great pizza," said David Chang, the Korean-American chef, trained at Craft and now the owner of Momofuku. "But I'm having a lot of fun trying."

Yup yup. One of the many things I love about the city is that I can get a fairly close approximation of authentic ramen. It's great year round, but the stuff is just fantastic in winter.

The article mentions the usual suspects like Honmura An on Mercer, Sapporo on 49th & 7th, Soba Ya and Rai Rai Ken in East Village

Other places I would recommend are Zen Sushi on St. Mark's between 2nd & 3rd (though they only have two styles) and Menkuitei on 56th between 5th & 6th.

And a word to the wise, if you're in Japan, the ramen is better the further away you get from Tokyo. Sapporo (far north east), and Kumamoto and Hakata (far southwest) have awesome noodles.