Breakfast ramen suggestion reveals that large satisfaction can come from small ingredient lists.
Earlier than ramen rocketed to worldwide recognition, exterior 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 had been at all times totally different. Right here, when you’re ordering a bowl of restaurant ramen you possibly can anticipate an array of tasty toppings like chashu pork, bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, and extra. You’d should look far and broad to discover a restaurant with the gall to offer you solely noodles and br-
OK, we must always again issues up a bit. Lately, our Japanese-language reporter Masanuki Sunakoma spent the night time within the city of Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture. Whereas there, he’d requested a few 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 useful menu gadgets of ramen with stir-fried greens and pot stickers. You really should look all the way 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 confirmed that the restaurant survives strictly on the flavour of its meals, and the tidy, organized setting confirmed that the workers takes delight 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 little bit hazy, however in broad phrases, it normally refers to ramen with stir-fried greens, mostly issues like cabbage, carrots, bean sprouts, wooden ear mushroom, and chives, as proven within the photographs straight under.
▼ Atypical too
▼ Extra unusual tanmen
However, Lao Xian’s tanmen appears like this.
At first look, you’d be forgiven for considering that somebody simply plain forgot to place the veggies in. Wanting nearer, although, Masanuki may see that there’s precisely one sort of vegetable current: minced onion.
Nonetheless, Masanuki held out hope. As a substitute of a “can’t-be-bothered” lack of enthusiasm, he selected to consider 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 all the way 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 could be, by a large margin, the easiest ramen on the earth for when you had 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 satisfying crispness to them, and together with dunking the gyoza within the offered rayu chili oil (which Lao Xian makes itself), he additionally dunked considered one of 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 extra rayu, so he loved the remainder of his gyoza individually from the noodles’ broth.
Blissful and full, Masanuki walked away from the restaurant with a recent reminder that typically much less is extra…but additionally a need for extra of this ramen the subsequent time he’s on the town.
Restaurant informationAtsugi Lao Xian / Atsugi Lao Xian Tackle: Kanagawa-ken, Atsugi-shi, Asahi-cho, 3-2-5 3-2-5 Asahi-cho, Atsugi-shi, Kanagawa Open 9 am-8:30 pmClosed Wednesdays
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