Have you heard of the Ramen Burger™?

They say it’s the next Cronut.

Started in New York just two months ago by Chef Keizo Shimamoto, the Ramen Burger™ has taken the ramen world by storm.

If his name sounds familiar to you, there’s a good reason for it – Keizo and I have been friends for several years now, and I’ve mentioned him when we went to the Shin Yokohama Ramen Museum and his ramen shop Bassanova the first time Son and I went to Japan, and then again when we went back to Bassanova and then got monjayaki and ramen with him in the middle of a typhoon during our second trip to Japan with Rachael and her family.

A few weeks ago, Keizo sent out a message to a bunch of his LA friends. The ramen burger was coming to LA!

Even better (at least, as far as I was concerned), he was bringing the ramen burger to the Torrance Mitsuwa!

Since it was so convenient for us (we go to the Torrance Mitsuwa all the time), and we REALLY wanted to try a ramen burger, Son and I volunteered to help.

When we got there at 9:30am, they said there were already more than 300 people in line. (They weren’t going to start serving Ramen Burgers™ until 11am.) Some of the people near the front of the line had been there since 6am!

At one point, there were over 1000 people in line. The line wrapped around the entire Mitsuwa building, until the tail met the front of the line… and Mitsuwa’s a pretty large building.

Never have I been so glad to be able to volunteer for something – especially since it was a pretty hot day in Torrance.

Since there were so many of Keizo’s friends volunteering, I just hung out for the first couple of hours (and explained to all the random people passing by what a ramen burger is) while Son and Cam and Tracy (the other photographers) took photos of the prep and the enormous line.

Keizo was busy prepping, and showing all of the volunteers how to prepare the Ramen Burgers™.

It wasn’t long before the news stations and other journalists started crowding in.

So… what is a ramen burger?

It comes wrapped in this neat wrapper that acts like a bowl, to catch the sauce and loose noodles.

And when you open it up, you find two ramen “buns”, surrounding an angus beef patty, arugula, their special shoyu-based “secret sauce”, and green onions.

(Yeah, I’m a food blogger, of course I had to Instagram a photo of it!)

So how does it taste?

Pretty gosh darned good, in my opinion.

I love ramen, I love burgers, and what Keizo has made is the perfect combination of the two.

Everyone who had waited in line for hours seemed to think it was worth it, too!

Sweetest moment of the day? Keizo serving his mom the very first ramen burger of the day – and she loved it!

Hey, who’s that food blogger? Lana showed up! ^_^

Lucky woman didn’t even have to wait in line – one of the members of the media didn’t want to finish his, so he gave the rest of his ramen burger to her.

A few hours after we started, a couple of the volunteers had to leave, so I got to step in and wrap the ramen burgers for the next three hours.

By 3pm, the last of the ramen burgers were gone. We had cooked, wrapped, and sold more than 500 of them. The day was a total success!

If you didn’t get to try a ramen burger this time around, you can try them every weekend at Smorgasburg in NY, or on weekdays for the next two weeks at Dassara in Brooklyn.

If you want to know when the ramen burger will be back in LA, follow me on twitter or facebook – I’ll announce it next time Keizo brings his Ramen Burger™ back to LA!