Food does not allow us to lie — when food is really grand, we forget adjectives and speak with our whole bodies. Our eyes roll back. We moan and grunt. We suck air through our noses to maximize mouth-stuffing. Sometimes we sit in reverential silence, closing our eyes to savour a taste on our tongues. Other meals call for smacking of lips and licking of fingers. We’d have to be Meryl fucking Streep to fake those kinds of reactions. Of course, this is North America, so a little fakery is a necessary courtesy. We try, unconvincingly, to spare people’s feelings. Our friends can deliver abstract, diversionary explanations for why, despite appearances, they really do like our play/novel/ugly child. But when we’re eating, the truth will out.

They say you can tell a good ramen when the customer picks up the bowl and chugs the last sip of broth. By that standard there is only one good bowl of ramen to be found in Toronto.

Maybe it’s because of the relatively small Japanese population here. Or perhaps it’s the stigma of instant ramen. Though their inventor, Momofuku Ando, is a national hero in Japan, instant noodles have ghettoized the perception of ramen in North America as student food. In Japan, fresh ramen is everywhere. It’s as much a part of their culture as pizza is ours. Every prefecture prides itself on some very specific point of excellence: the tonkotsu broth of Fukuoka, the thick noodles and niboshi broth of Kitakata, the miso ramen of Sapporo.

What to expect everywhere is a massive bowl of miso, pork or chicken broth filled with curly ramen noodles (made with wheat flour, salt and kansui, an alkaline mineral water that produces the yellow colour), topped with thin slices of pork, green onions, nori, hard-boiled egg or kamaboko (steamed fish cakes similar to gefilte fish but with a distinctive candy-cane swirl). Ramen shops often have a vending machine rather than a cashier and plywood dividers separating each diner around a horseshoe-shaped bar. They’re not a place for hanging out. What they offer is a quick, hot meal, available very late to accommodate hungry drinkers and hardworking salarymen or OLs (office ladies).

Yet, despite the ubiquity of sushi in Toronto, one has to dig deep to find ramen here. Ematai on St. Patrick presents a pleasant broth offset by half-inch boulders of cloying pork. The atrocity served at Izakaya belongs on trial at The Hague, not on a menu. R-Shop, a furniture store on King West makes ramen in winter only.

iNoodle, one purveyor of ramen, lands in competition with Johny Banana and I Feel Like Crepe as the worst named restaurant of the year. But they’re certainly trying. Like so many new restaurants, their menu seeks to please everyone, offering virtually every variation of ramen along with a gaggle of Japanese dishes and Korean galbi.

The tonkotsu broth is truly wonderful. Crushed pork bones thicken the soup to an almost milky texture. There’s just the right amount of thinly sliced, not-too-lean pork on top. The noodles are a bit tough though, almost al dente.

It’s the same story with the Karashi Negi. An excellent broth spiced with Japanese mustard is waylaid by the same stiff noodles. That they are able to produce different broths, of distinct and satisfying qualities, suggests that they have the level of talent and commitment to make this work. But they’re not going to reach the next level until they find a better brand of noodles or start making their own.

By the end of the meal, a chorus of “pretty good/decent/good enough/not bad” echoes across the table. But the truth is at the bottom of our bowls, an incriminating inch of chewy noodles that no one wants to finish, a thin film of grease reflecting our guilt.

Defeat gives way to serenity at Konichiwa on Baldwin. They’ve got the noodles right, thank Odin. They’ve got the right broth, pork, even the spoon with a hook that prevents it sliding into the soup. We inhale ramen rapidly using the chopsticks to shovel noodles into the mouth (as is custom), tipping the bowl to drain the last drops. When we open our eyes again we see the chef’s been watching, and he’s as relieved as we are that we’ve found Toronto’s best ramen.