Breakfast ramen suggestion exhibits that large satisfaction can come from small ingredient lists.
Earlier than ramen rocketed to worldwide reputation, outdoors of Japan it was largely seen as one thing just for these too lazy or broke for “actual” meals. Chalk it as much as the early worldwide picture of ramen as a bowl of noodles, broth, and nothing else.
In fact, in Japan issues have been all the time totally different. Right here, for those who’re ordering a bowl of restaurant ramen you may count on an array of tasty toppings like chashu pork, bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, and extra. You’d must look far and broad to discover a restaurant with the gall to provide you solely noodles and br-
OK, we should always again issues up a bit. Just lately, our Japanese-language reporter Masanuki Sunakoma spent the night time within the city of Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture. Whereas there, he’d requested a number of the locals to suggest a spot for breakfast, they usually clued him in about Lao Xian, a ramen restaurant about 10 minutes on foot from the South Gate of Honatsugi Station that opens at 9 a.m.
To name Lao Xian’s storefont understated could be an understatement. The straightforward, barely worn signal simply says “Tanmen and gyoza restaurant,” citing its really helpful menu objects of ramen with stir-fried greens and pot stickers. You truly must look right down to the noren curtain hanging in entrance of the doorway to see the restaurant’s precise title.
Issues are equally low-key inside, with a plain pink counter and plain pink stools wrapped across the central kitchen space.
The menu hangs on the wall, written in, you guessed it, plain however neat handwriting.
This lack of any ostentatious accouterment, although, solely served to spice up Masanuki’s confidence that he is perhaps in for one thing particular. The absence of fancy decorations or flashy advertising and marketing confirmed that the restaurant survives strictly on the flavour of its meals, and the tidy, organized setting confirmed that the workers takes satisfaction of their work.
Placing his belief within the signal’s ideas, Masanuki ordered a bowl of tanmen for 750 yen (US$5) and a plate of gyoza for 600.
The precise definition of tanmen is a bit of hazy, however in broad phrases, it often refers to ramen with stir-fried greens, mostly issues like cabbage, carrots, bean sprouts, wooden ear mushroom, and chives, as proven within the photographs instantly under.
▼ Atypical tanmen
▼ Extra unusual tanmen
Then again, Lao Xian’s tanmen appears to be like like this.
At first look, you’d be forgiven for considering that somebody simply plain forgot to place the veggies in. Trying nearer, although, Masanuki might see that there’s precisely one sort of vegetable current: minced onion.
Nonetheless, Masanuki held out hope. As an alternative of a “can’t-be-bothered” lack of enthusiasm, he selected to imagine that this sparse simplicity was akin to what occurs when a person embarks on a journey of coaching and self-improvement, then comes down from the mountains months later, having polished his soul right down to essentially the most pure necessities, whose purity has been enriched all of the extra by eradicating all non-essentials.
And this religion was rewarded as Masanuki took his first style. There’s a slight tinge of stimulating sourness to the broth, however the taste of Lao Xian’s ramen is in any other case as clear and uncluttered because the restaurant’s inside. Light, comforting, and undeniably scrumptious, Masanuki was instantly enthralled, and declares that this may be, by a large margin, the perfect ramen on the planet for for those who have been nursing a hangover, although he was additionally totally having fun with it sober.
Remembering that he’d ordered gyoza too, Masanuki turned his consideration to the dumplings and popped one in his mouth. That they had a lovely crispness to them, and together with dunking the gyoza within the supplied rayu chili oil (which Lao Xian makes itself), he additionally dunked one in all them into his ramen, since rayu is a suitable tanmen condiment. Nonetheless, having tried it each methods, Masanuki feels Lao Xian’s tanmen broth is at its finest with none further rayu, so he loved the remainder of his gyoza individually from the noodles’ broth.
Completely happy and full, Masanuki walked away from the restaurant with a recent reminder that typically much less is extra…but in addition a need for extra of this ramen the following time he’s on the town.
Restaurant info
Atsugi Lao Xian / 厚木 ラオシャン
Tackle: Kanagawa-ken, Atsugi-shi, Asahi-cho, 3-2-5
神奈川県厚木市旭町3丁目2-5
Open 9 a.m.-8:30 p.m.
Closed Wednesdays
Photographs ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]
