Katie Dong, a self-professed ramen and soup enthusiast, works at the kitchen of the Monster Ramen, a new ramen shop in Logan Square, on Aug. 18, 2022. (Victor Hilitski/for the Chicago Tribune)

“I am a noodle nerd.”

This statement from Monster Ramen owner Katie Dong is precisely what you want to hear from someone running a ramen shop.

“I’m always thinking of doing crazy things with noodles,” Dong said. “I’ll be taking a shower in the morning, and then I’ll think of some new noodle dish I can try today. My mind keeps racing with possibilities.”

Right by the front window of her new Logan Square shop is a Sanuki Menki noodle machine. To make each batch, she uses a combination of California and Japanese wheat, which she mixes with water, egg white and alkaline salt — the ingredient that lends ramen noodles their distinct bouncy texture. Once the dough is rolled at least six times, it’s cut and then rests for at least 24 hours.

Not many ramen places in town do this from scratch, especially in full view of the guests.

Dong’s love of noodles began while growing up in Nanjing, China. “Beef noodle soup was my favorite noodle dish when I was a little child in China,” Dong said. At 14 years old, she moved with her parents to Chicago, and within a year starting working at her parents’ restaurant. “I started working in the culinary world early,” she said. After attending college for a couple of years, she dropped out, eager to get back to the culinary life. “I really love working in the restaurant industry,” she said.

The miso wagyu bowl at Monster Ramen, where noodles are made from scratch. (Victor Hilitski/for the Chicago Tribune)

But it wasn’t until about 10 years ago that she started obsessing over ramen. “It started when I helped Strings Ramen open in Chinatown,” she said of the locally owned ramen operation. “Then I spent time in Japan and Taiwan, where I met a lot of cool people in the ramen business. That’s where I started thinking about opening my own ramen shop.”

After finding a location in late 2020 in Logan Square, she spent roughly two years building out the space to create a ramen shop unlike any in Chicago. Most ramen shops are moody places, with dark paint jobs and dim lighting. But Monster Ramen is calm and airy. “A ramen shop can be a bright place,” Dong said.

Partly inspired by her love of beef noodle soup, Dong knew she wanted to serve beef ramen. “I just love beef,” she said. “If there are two bowls of ramen on the table, one pork and one beef, I’ll choose beef every time.”

So like the recently opened Gyuro Ramen (which is run by Strings Ramen owner Kenny Yang), Monster Ramen serves gyukotsu-style ramen. Originally a specialty of the Tottori prefecture in southern Japan, this style is starting to gain popularity around Japan, though it’s still pretty rare in the United States.

[  Column: The rarest ramen in Chicago is made with bison bones in a new West Loop shop ]

But unlike Gyuro Ramen, which intriguingly uses bison bones for its broth, Monster Ramen uses three types of beef bones. “We use neck bones with some meat attached, femur bones that have marrow, and also beef heads with brains in them,” Dong said. “We have to place them in the pressure cooker in a very specific way, so we can suck out all the essence and flavor at a certain time.”

Instead of creating a super heavy and rich broth, Dong prefers to keep the broth on the lighter side. “My beef broth comes out more delicate than many pork broths,” she said. She’s right. Instead of thick and greasy, the beef-based broth tastes has a lighter consistency, yet is fortifying and deeply meaty.

The best way to experience the intricacies of this elixir is to go with a bowl of the house shio. Notice how the broth exudes the essence of beef without weighing you down. Appreciate how each noodle isn’t soft and slippery, but bouncy and distinct. Smell the slight citrus profile from the addition of yuzu, along with the concentrated burst of beefiness thanks to the beef jam (basically beef cooked down into a concentrated paste).

This deserves to be included in any list of the best bowls of ramen in Chicago.

Monster Ramen, a new ramen shop in Logan Square makes its noodles from scratch. (Victor Hilitski/for the Chicago Tribune)

Katie Dong uses a torch while preparing a miso wagyu bowl at the Monster Ramen. (Victor Hilitski/for the Chicago Tribune)

If you’re in the mood for something more substantial, the miso wagyu bowl is the way to go. An umami-packed miso paste lends each sip more heft and weight, while also adding salty and slightly sweet background notes.

But even if you aren’t a fan of beef, you have options. Dong offers a delightful tori chintan, a lighter chicken broth used in the shop’s excellent house shoyu, which gets its dark tint from soy sauce.

There’s also a vegetarian option, miso yasai, which uses a kombu dashi. (Because the noodles have egg white in them, there are no vegan ramen options.)

In general, toppings are kept to a minimum. You can add extras in if you’d like, though you’ll have to pay for them. This might annoy diners used to ramen loaded with extras like boiled eggs, thick slabs of meat, bean sprouts and fish cake, but I like the focus.

Like most ramen shops, Monster Ramen also offers some starters, but the options are mostly light and refreshing, which is ideal before digging into a huge bowl. My favorite is the cucumber and wakame salad, a gorgeous dish of lightly pickled cucumbers with halved cherry tomatoes in a bright and citrusy yuzu dressing. You can also order terrific petite housemade dumplings.

Cucumber and wakame salad at Monster Ramen. (Victor Hilitski/for the Chicago Tribune)

You’ll find a few other noodles dishes, a category Dong hopes to increase over time.

By far the least traditional is the mapo-men, which Dong describes as a hybrid of mapo tofu, the incendiary Chinese dish featuring cubed tofu in spicy chile sauce, and Japanese tsukemen, noodles served separately alongside soup, dipped into the liquid for each bite.

Dong dreamed it up in 2020 while competing on “Guy’s Grocery Games,” the competition cooking show hosted by Guy Fieri. The creation helped her win the top prize, along with $16,000. While the mapo tofu is satisfying, I found dipping the cold noodles in the mixture a bit awkward, if still interesting. For now, I’ll stick with the ramen.

Regardless, all of this is quite impressive for a restaurant still technically in soft opening mode. Once Dong has trained more kitchen staff, she hopes to stay open for lunch and brunch and have an official grand opening celebration. (Like essentially every restaurant owner I’ve talked to over the year, she said finding enough staff is difficult.)

This also means current wait times for bowls can reach 20 minutes or more. They also come out as each bowl is ready, which might be awkward in a group. On my last visit, I watched as three people at a table got bowls, but waited almost 10 minutes to start eating until the last person in their party was served. While they were obviously being polite, I felt a urge to run over and demand the rest start eating before their noodles overcooked into soft mush.

Still, if all you care about is trying one of the more unique bowls in the city, there’s no reason to wait.

Considering the space and the attention to detail, I initially found the name confusing. Monsters are brash and messy, but Monster Ramen is mostly refined and thoughtful. But Dong thinks it sums up the shop perfectly: “I always tell people that when it comes to ramen, I’m a monster! I’m crazy about ramen, and could eat ramen every day.”

Tribune rating: Two stars, very good

Open: Wednesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 3 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Sunday, 3 p.m. to 9 p.m.; Closed, Monday and Tuesday

Prices: Starters, $6.95 to $7.95; entrees, $14.95 to $27.95

Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible, with bathroom on first floor

Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.