As you might have guessed from my Ramen Survival Guide, between all of the different broths, styles, and toppings, you can find a ton of different varieties of ramen in noodle shops in Japan.

For most people, that variety is enough; but some ramen shops go completely off the map to push the limits of ramen and entice customers with novelty dishes. Strange toppings and unusual broths help noodle shops stand out from an increasingly saturated market.

The strangest thing of all? Most of these strange dishes are actually really, really good. Here are some of the strangest ramen dishes that Japanese noodle shops have cooked up in recent years:

Tequila Ramen

Unsurprisingly, Japan makes notoriously bad Mexican food, so I was a little apprehensive when I first heard about the tequila ramen at Kouno noodle shop (麺や河野). But against all odds, the Tokyo restaurant’s concoction of lime, a shot of tequila, and cilantro work well together.

Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that the combination tastes good—after all, Vietnamese phở also uses lime and cilantro as garnish, so maybe throwing in some tequila isn’t that radical after all.

Ramen Burger

Japanese fast food chain Lotteria is notorious for cooking up some strange, strange hamburgers; past hits have included the oversized shrimp burger named in honor of Japanese comedian Sugi-chan, and a nine patty burger to celebrate an anime movie.

More recently, Lotteria teamed up with ramen restaurant Menya Musashi to create a ramen burger. A batch of ramen is fried up in the shape of a patty, then pork and mayonnaise or added before it’s placed between two buns.

Not quite the traditional way that you see ramen served, but more or less par for the course for Lotteria.

Ice Cream Ramen, Colorful Broth

If you’re looking for strange ramen, look no farther than Tokyo ramen shop Kikuya (菊や). Kikuya offers unusual ramen dishes in all varieties, using all sorts of ingredients and tricks to interest even the most dyed-in-the-wool ramen eater.

For one, there’s the color selection:

At Kikuya, you can get ramen with broth of virtually any color, including purple, red, and sky blue. While it looks pretty unnatural, the colorful broth is anything but; the color comes from natural ingredients like red cabbage, and clever mixing.

Kikuya also offers a ramen dish topped with an ice cream cone slide down the middle. According to ramen lore, a child came into the shop on a hot day and asked for ice cream, joking with the chef that an ice cream ramen would be ideal.

Being the genius that he is, the owner decided to turn this joke into a reality. Before long, Kikuya’s ice cream ramen became its signature dish.

The strange menu at Kikuya is way too long to go through in full here—between the colorful broth, ice cream ramen, and other oddities like cheese (think Kraft singles) ramen, cocoa ramen, and battery (think alkaline) ramen, you could spend weeks sampling Kikuya’s unorthodox offerings.

Pineapple and Strawberry Ramen

Ramen is a very savory dish; you don’t grab a bowl of ramen when you’ve got the hankering for something sweet. Because of that (and the fact that you don’t find too much fruit in ramen to begin with), the sometimes sweet dishes from Tokyo ramen shop Papapapapine (パパパパパイン) are a little surprising.

Papapapapine’s most famous dish is its pineapple ramen, which comes complete with chunks of pineapple and a pineapple-based broth. You can see Papapapapine’s pride in its specialty dish from the pineapple-shaped lantern hanging outside of the shop, its pineapple-yellow counters, and the ceramic pineapples adorning the restaurant.

Aside from its signature dish, Papapapapine also offers a strawberry ramen, aptly named Susususustrawberry. Like the pineapple ramen, Susususustrawberry has chunks of fruit floating in the soup, and the broth is strawberry-based with a little cream.

You can add condensed milk to taste, for a combination that seems more like a dessert than a meal. Despite the unorthodox combinations, reports are that both dishes are actually pretty good.

Taco Ramen

Ivan Orkin is a New Yorker who’s famous around the world for being one of the few gaijin to open a successful ramen business (アイバンラーメン AKA Ivan Ramen) in the fiercely competitive Japanese market.

While being a gaijin has been more than enough to make Ivan Ramen stand out, Orkin’s uses some unusual. In addition to using rye, an unorthodox ingredient by Japanese standards, to make the noodles themselves, a few years back Orkin created his own take on taco rice—taco ramen.

Taco rice is actually a pretty common dish in Japan, but it’s unusual for ramen to be used as a substitute for rice, and Orkin, an American from New York City, adds his own American touch to the dish.

In addition to the house-made noodles that Ivan Ramen has become known for, the taco ramen has lettuce, tomato, and beef with taco seasoning. No broth whatsoever, nor any of the typical toppings you’d see on your average bowl of ramen.

It was a seasonal special a few years ago, so you won’t be able to get it anymore; which is unfortunate, because it sounds delicious (and would probably go well with the tequila ramen).

Ramen has changed a lot over the last century as it’s come to almost dominate Japan’s culinary landscape. New techniques and approaches, like miso and double soup ramen, have become commonplace.

So while you probably won’t find chunks of pineapple in purple broth in your typical ramen shop anytime soon, I think that it’s great that ramen chefs across Japan continue to dream up new dishes that push the boundaries of ramen.

Even though ramen is originally from China and was once called shina soba (しなそば), over the course of about 150 years ramen has slowly but surely become a uniquely Japanese dish, and even a staple across the country.

Chefs all over Japan have tinkered and toyed with ramen, elevated the food to a national obsession. Different parts of the country have very different styles of ramen, to the point where they represent a sort of regional pride. Once you’ve seen the ramen movie to end all ramen movies, you’ll see the kind of passion the Japanese have for their noodles.

I’ve tried all of the ramen offerings in my hometown of Portland, and while there are some bright spots, most are fairly disappointing (partly because I neglected to follow to Laws of Identifying a Real Japanese Restaurant).

But as much as I’m a ramen noobie, I know there are others out there who are less fortunate than I, whose only brush with noodly goodness is instant ramen out of a packet or in a styrofoam cup. Here is my effort to guide those people in the right direction, walking you through step by step, ingredient by ingredient, what’s what in a delicious bowl of ramen.

Broths

The foundation of any good ramen is the broth and, when done right, is light years beyond the little packet of flavoring that comes with instant ramen.

A good broth is made over the course of hours and has a ton of different ingredients, but there are a few primary types of ramen broth:

Shoyu (醤油)

Soy sauce, or shoyu is a staple in basically every type of ramen broth, but is more prominent in some more than others. It has a very rich, salty, umami flavor to it, and a dark color.

Miso (味噌)

You’ve no doubt had miso soup before, but miso broth is a little more than just your standard “off the hook” miso soup. Miso broth a relatively recent ramen invention (miso ramen’s only been around for about 50 years), and is more of a regional specialty than a countrywide phenomenon.

Shio (塩)

Most ramen broths use shoyu to give it a lot of that salty flavor, but shio ramen does it a bit differently. It uses salty things from the ocean, like seaweed and other dried seafoods to give it a salty and umami flavor.

Pork (豚骨)

Who doesn’t like pork? Well, besides people who don’t eat red meat, pescatarians, vegetarians, and vegans. Pork broth is a stock made from pig’s bones and other ingredients which vary by the chef.

Toppings

Ramen toppings are yet another way to distinguish your bowl of noodles from everybody else. They’re not quite the heart and soul of the dish, but they make an already awesome dish ever more awesome.

According to Tampopo, each ingredient basically has its own personality, its own special place in the bowl, and you must treat them with respect.

There are a lot of basic toppings that almost always make it into the ramen bowl: things like seaweed, green onions, bamboo shoots, etc.. But some have a much larger personality and role in the bowl:

Pork

Pork comes in ramen comes many forms, whether it’s char siu, pork shoulder or pork belly. My all-time personal favorite is stewed, cubed pork belly, otherwise known as kakuni (角煮). On a good (or bad) day, I’d probably kill a man to get some.

Egg

This ain’t your grandpa’s hard-boiled egg — the eggs that go into ramen reached a level culinary sophistication far beyond your average scrambled or boiled variety.

Lots of chefs cook the egg in a way that the yolk is still left gooey and intact. Some slow poach the egg, a process that requires that the egg never touch the bottom of the pot, and a thermometer to measure the exact temperature of the water at all times. All in all, slow poaching an egg takes about an hour; or, a little more than your egg timer can handle.

Even better still are eggs boiled then soaked in a sort of marinade, usually some combination including soy sauce and mirin. The way the sauces get into the eggwhites is just amazing. I’d highly recommend it.

Corn

Yes, corn. More recently, people in Japan have begun experimenting with new and sometimes weird ingredients not native to Japan or even China. The uniquely American grain has somehow snuck across the Pacific and into ramen bowls in Japan.

It’s not uncommon to see corn paired with butter in the ramen bowl, all atop miso broth. You see this more in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost island. Something about the warm, buttery corn makes sense in the frigid northern weather, I guess.

Different Styles

Some types of ramen break completely free of the “noodles in broth with toppings” idea. Some are completely brothless, which can be good in its own way. It lets you focus a lot more on the taste and texture of the noodles.

Another style that’s gained popularity is tsukemen (つけ麺), which are cold noodles with a separate sauce for dipping. Some people love to add enough chili oil to make you want to cry.

While this post doesn’t even begin to cover all of the different varieties of ramen, hopefully it will be a guide for those of you out there in the ramen wilderness. For more, I’d highly recommend the food magazine Lucky Peach, issue 1. If you can read through that and not be hungry, then you’re just not human.