Ramen Adventures

Location: Kyoto, Japan. 2003.
Sunday, 9pm, cold night.

“I’m hungry”

“So am I,” said JP. It was momiji season–the time of the fall when the leaves change colour, and the Japanese come out by the thousands to photograph them. We had been walking the whole day along the philosopher’s path–a nice stroll that connects several temples with lots of trees brazing themselves for hibernation.

“Everything seems closed”

“I feel like something warm”

“Lets eat ramen–know any shops?”

“I have a friend who’s into ramen. Let me email him.” JP produced his cellphone and typed at the speed of light a short message. Cryptic I would say. “Now, Kyoto downtown. Ramen, where?”

Within two minutes the answer came back. It was a ten minute walk, and I’d have never stopped at this shop otherwise. It was almost a street stall. There was a small counter directly on the street and a small cloth hid the diners (from outside you could only see their legs). There were a few people lining up and we had to wait in the cold. The bowl I was about to have would change my image of ramen forever.

Up to that moment, my ramen experience was limited to the cafeteria at the university where I was placed as an exchange student. For 220 yen (2 dollars) one could get a bowl of wakame ramen. The soup was always watery, and it was just noodles with a big handful of seaweed. Nothing particular but a cheap lunch for a perpetually broke student.

The first thing I noticed when I walked under the cloth of that Kyoto stall was that my bowl of soup with wheat-worms was about to cost me 1100 yen (11 dollars). Pretty expensive, considering I could get five lunches for the same price.

But the soup. Wow. Four hours later, I could still taste it. And it wasn’t like when you eat bad chocolate and the sour taste stays in your mouth. No, it was as if I had been taking small sips of soup for four hours and the flavour was always fresh. JP’s girlfriend told me I was having tonkotsu soup, which is made with pork bones, and usually tastes stronger than shoyu ramen (soy-sauce ramen). The noodles were cooked al dente, the toppings laid out like a broken fan, and three slices of fatty pork crowned the dish.

Some Japanese go crazy about ramen. There’s specialized magazines and forums that track down new shops and rate them. A bad review, and chances are the shop won’t survive for long. A glowing review, and there’ll be lineups. I even saw once on TV a test for true ramen connoisseurs. Four contestants were presented with different soups, and they could actually identify which restaurant produced which soup.

The best ramen I’ve had outside Japan is at Vancouver’s Kintaro ramen (On Denman St./Robson St.).

“Irashaimase! (Welcome!)” Walking into this shop is like a flashback to Japan, where one is greeted with a loud Irashaimase in pretty much every store (Except for a family-run bakery nearby my house where they couldn’t be bothered. But they always brought a nine-year old from the back of the room so he could practice his English).

Their specialty is miso ramen. The noodles are made on site, and the place always feels like a steam room because of the three or four cauldrons simmering with soup base. This shop only makes ramen, and you can tell how much practice the cooks get because they look like they’re on auto-pilot.

When the waiter/waitress comes, there’s a tough choice ahead–lean or fatty pork. Unless you just had a heart attack, go for the extra fat. It melts in your mouth, and part of it melts into the soup and makes it even more fattylicious. Lili plowed her way through a bowl of miso-ramen with fatty pork, and I had a bowl of cold ramen. It came dipped in a soy-based broth, and garnished with cucumber sticks, lean pork and shredded omelet. Not bad, but I missed my fatty pork!

While Kintaro makes some pretty good ramen, I still fantasize about that bowl in Kyoto. Too bad I can’t even remember how to get there, but I still remember the soup.