Frank Ocean's Producer Makes the Case for Ramen in Warm Weather

Welcome to Best Thing We Ate This Week, where each week, we'll have a special guest or Thrillist staff member talk about a New York dish they recently tried and loved. This week, Grammy-award winning record producer, Malay -- who worked on Frank Ocean’s Blonde and Channel Orange -- talks about his favorite ramen in New York.

I’ve had quite a few bowls of ramen in the city, and I’ve been to some of the more popular ramen places, and they were good, but when you have something that’s a step above, it’s pretty night and day. That’s what Mu Ramen in Long Island City is.

It’s just one of those cash-only, really small places. We got there at 5pm (when it opened) because I heard there’s usually quite a wait. Of course, there was already a line down the street; but within 30 minutes we were eating. The seating here almost feels communal, because the tables are so close together in the middle. We ended up getting a seat at the corner, right by the kitchen, and got to watch them prepare everything.

There are little differences at Mu that you don’t see at a lot of ramen places -- starting with the fact that the menu seemingly changes daily. The day I went, I had a duck broth. It’s super umami, very rich but not too salty. My wife had the pork ramen, which was more traditional (the duck broth tasted a little bit better to me). There were also tons of great sides, like fried chicken wings with foie gras in them. It’s definitely the kind of place that I want to go back to, if only to keep trying all the new things they come up with it.

-- As told to Thrillist

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