We ran across this restaurant review in a recent edition of the online L.A. Weekly, and the description (although from an admitted non-chilehead) was fascinating and alluring. Suffice to say, we hope that our resident Californian chilehead Jon Passow can find his way to this place and give us a full report. Check it out, dude!

Red Menace

Orochon Ramen’s Special 2: Eat at your own risk
By JONATHAN GOLD
Wednesday, March 28, 2007 - 12:00 pm

I’d like to begin this week’s column by pointing out that while I enjoy a certain level of heat in my food, I’m not a chilehead, not a real one anyway. A roasted habanero is delicious in its place, and I enjoy the more emphatic aspects of Thai cooking, but I’m not fond of the kind of extreme sauces whose labels brag about the level of harm the contents may wreak on its fans’ gastro­intestinal systems, and I’ve never thrown a red savina chile into a stir-fry just for fun. The idea of Pure Cap, a concentrated extract of capsaicin, the chemical that makes chiles hot, is frightening. I have fallen — once — for the gag of eating a chip loaded with a quarter bottle of Dave’s Insanity Sauce, and I am here to report that it hurt, a lot. I don’t know about you, but I am persuaded that a condiment powerful enough to temporarily blind its consumers is probably a condiment one should avoid.

Click here to read the rest of this awesome review!

The contact info:

Orochon Ramen
123 S. Onizuka St., No. 303 (Weller Court),
Little Tokyo
(213) 617-1766
www.orochonramen.com.

Open daily, 11:30 a.m.-10:15 p.m. MasterCard and Visa accepted, minimum $20. Beer and sake. Takeout. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $13-$20. Recommended dish: ramen.

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