The next shop in my Top 5 is near and dear to my heart. I absolutely love beef and nothing makes my eyes roll back in my head quicker then a perfectly roasted piece of bone marrow or an unctuous lusciously gelatinous piece of beef tendon. This shop was first time I've had a true beef based ramen that wasn't named Maruchan and the experience truly opened my eyes to the potential of ramen. 

Matador is located in sleepy neighborhood past a large train crossing in Kita-Senju, a neighborhood in the Northeastern part of Tokyo. It feels a little special each time I make the trek out here (most people don't realize how expansive Tokyo really is). If this shop was any closer, I'm pretty sure I'd be indulging myself with this ramen on a weekly basis - that's how delicious it is! This shop serves up one of the most unique and flat out satisfying bowls of ramen I've recently had the pleasure of enjoying in the last few years. 

Their signature is the "Luxurious Roast Beef" Ramen, served with 2 large slices of roast beef that eclipse most of the bowl. The soup is a shoyu based beef bone soup fortified with dried anchovies and squid for body and a subtle oceanic sweetness. It's topped with three varieties of onions and a scoop of an out-of-this-world braised beef tendon stew that totally takes it over the top.

There are innumerable superlatives I could use to describe this bowl of ramen (hyper savory, unctuously rich yet simultaneously light, full bodied and complex), but the one aspect that I feel brings it all together is the sweetness. If you've ever had Sukiyaki or French Onion soup, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. I don't know if its coming from the beef broth or if they use some extra sugar and special mirin in their Shoyu-dare (concentrated ramen flavoring sauce), but for me, it's what makes the ramen so addictive and forces me to keep going back until every last drop of soup is inhaled. 

Check out the gallery below for some shots of the other types of ramen they serve. The tsukemen was also surprisingly delicious for having thin noodles and a looser soup which is normally the death knell of tsukemen. Some how they've got the balance of the tsuke-dare (dipping soup) down to where it's loose enough but flavored perfectly to coat their thin house made noodles.

Links and Shop info:
Tabelog 
Yelp
2-4-17 Senjuazuma Adachi Tokyo
東京都 足立区 千住東 2-4-17 中村ビル１Ｆ

Takesue Tokyo Premium (Oshiage, Tokyo)

I originally wrote about this shop in one of my very first blog posts. I was lucky enough to squeeze in another visit on our last visit to Tokyo to re-affirm my love for the Chicken and Scallop ramen. 

I got to try the Yashio-masu Trout ramen on this visit which was interesting and very good, but I'm lucky the wife ordered the Chicken and Scallop because that is definitely still my favorite here. Their velvety chicken soup would be amazing on it's own but they use this unique technique that I've never seen before where they finish each bowl with a super thick umami rich chicken and scallop gravy. It's just those few tablespoons which add a whole different dimension and the best way I can describe it is getting to experience 2 delicious bowls of ramen at the same time. The flavors all work together and also play off of each other and it's just so much fun to alternate between the lighter cleaner soup and the richer side with the huge punch of umami. The best part is they make every bowl in front of you which adds to the whole experience, taking the whole "open kitchen" experience to the next level. I even brought back a little video this time that shows you what it feels like to order a bowl of amazing ramen here!

​Check back soon for part 2 of this series! And apologies for the delay with getting this info up - the ramen pop-up has been taking up most of my time. It still amazes me how much time it takes to confit chicken skins and render and infuse chicken fat from scratch!

You ever have one of those nights where you're trying to figure out what to have for dinner? Your wife is like, "I want to eat something light and healthy," but she doesn't have any concrete ideas, while you want to eat meat and maybe some Korean tofu soup and a strawberry parfait...(yeah don't even ask). 

If you're anything like me, those are some of the most excruciating conversations to have. No one wants to commit to anything and every one starts to sour on any recommendation, all while your stomach is eating itself. Well you're in luck... IF you're in a Japan that is! GO TO DENNY'S! I know what you're thinking, if its anything like American Denny's, you're wondering what the heck I've been smoking. But really, truly, honestly, no lie, Denny's in Japan is awesome. 

I normally recommend friends visiting Japan to try eating at Denny's at least once if they can squeeze it into their schedule. There are a good number of them located all throughout the city, they have a diverse menu with seasonal specialities and nice shiny pictures, serve very decent food with consistent service, have ample seating, a non-smoking section, and the price is reasonable! 

Here's a breakdown of what I ordered the last time I was there:

Let's compare some sample menus just for the hell of it from a Japanese and American Denny's. I have to admit, the American menu looks a lot better than what I remember from 7 - 8 years ago, and who knows it might really be better. The problem with American Denny's, like most things in America, is consistency and execution. 

The last memory of a meal at Denny's in the good ol U.S. of A., I recall ordering a Grand Slam skillet and having the worst eggs I have ever eaten in my life. They literally tasted like a cross between old Play-Doh and plastic shavings. Sadly, if I get desperate enough, I may have to try eating there again and seeing if they've made any improvements. Please pray for me.

In Japan, cooking ramen has historically been known as one of the rare vocations accepting of outcasts - part timers who aren't able to land a "real" job, ex-truck drivers tired of commuting at odd hours, bike gang bangers trying to re-enter society. This has obviously changed in recent years and in Japan's ever dynamic ramen landscape, one of the trends has seen classically trained chefs doing a u-turn on their French, Japanese, or Italian roots and opening their own specialized ramen shops. An NYC native by the name of Ivan Orkin, is someone you might recognize who also followed a similar path after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America and working in a few restaurants in New York, before moving back to Japan then slowly establishing his budding Ivan Ramen empire from a quiet little suburb northwest of Tokyo.

This trend has spawned a handful of unique shops that bring creative new approaches and levels of precision and refinement not previously seen in ramen. These chefs turned ramen masters are taking a democratized dish like ramen and filtering it through their refined technique to create something completely new, yet deliciously familiar. It's an amazing thing for a ramen fiend because they are bringing a whole new perspective using their vastly diverse skills and experiences from high-end restaurants and focusing that creativity and energy into an amazing bowl of noodles and soup!

Enter Motenashi Kuroki (饗 くろ喜), one of the best bowls I've had in recent memory and what I feel could be the best bowls of shio, or salt-based, ramen I've ever eaten.

The tiny shop is located between the Akihabara and Asakusabashi area of north-eastern Tokyo. There are only 13 seats, but the interior is impeccably clean and well lit. The shelves are decorated with all the meticulously selected ingredients that go into the Kuroki's secret soup as well as cookbooks from a diverse range of cuisines displaying the chef's background and interests - Kaiseki and French to just name a few. 

Trying to beat the weekday lunch rush, I attempted to arrive before noon, but still managed to get caught in a 40 minute queue. I don't enjoy lining up for food, so long waits tend to alter my impression of the food. It's a bias I'm very conscious of, but it's also a great indicator of how much I like a place if I feel the insatiable urge to return and wait in line all over again. Kuroki was one of those experiences; after walking out, I was already trying to calculate the possibility of squeezing another visit in.

Some wonder what's so special about ramen - the soup is basically salt, water, and fat right? What makes it any different then a bowl of chicken noodle soup or even a package of dried ramen? To be perfectly honest, I can totally understand. It's because they've never eaten a bowl of ramen with such complex, deep, and refined flavors; ramen like Kuroki's where you can literally taste the amount of care and effort put into it. Before I moved to Japan, Ramen wasn't a top priority on my 'to-eat' list. I've had what I thought were very good bowls of noodle soup before. I've eaten really good and authentic pho, I've slurped some ramen made in a few restaurants in SF's Japantown. Simply stated, I had preconceived notions and assumed that it couldn't get that much better.

The shio-ramen at Kuroki is the antithesis of the types of ramen I bitched about in an earlier post on my first impressions of SF's current ramen scene. Salt based ramen is said to be one of the most difficult to master because of how subtle the soup is. Balance is extremely difficult to achieve and using too much or too little salt and fat is a consistent struggle. Just to give a recent example, the last shio-ramen I ate a month ago in SF had soup that was under seasoned and lacked fat and depth, so the end product tasted less like a soup and more like pasta water.

Kuroki's shio has so much depth, a multitude of subtle flavors, and complexity that I wouldn't and couldn't do justice with words after just having eaten it once. I needed additional research afterwards to understand more about the minute details that made it so exceptional. 

• He apparently uses a blend of 6 different types of salt from different areas, mountains, and seas. 
• The base of the soup is fortified with a variety of niboshi (煮干し) or dried fish that decorate his shelves - flying fish, saury, and horse mackerel, just to name of a few of the ones that I could recognize. 
• His noodles are made in-house in a closet sized space in the back of the restaurant and consist of a blend of different fine ground domestic flours as well as a little whole wheat for texture.
  
• The toppings, his chashu pork is braised low and slow for 2 days with little salt or seasoning to accentuate and concentrate the flavors of the meat. The other topping, a chicken ham, appears to have the texture of a sous-vide'd meat, but it could also be that it was simmered at a precise temperature and cured slightly.
• Unfortunately, I forgot to add-on an egg so I couldn't try his cured egg that other reviewers have raved about.
• Kuroki also does a few seasonal ramens. He seems to rotate a few new seasonal items every month, depending on what ingredients inspire him. Check out the gallery below. These pictures are directly from his shop's blog.
• Update: The shop has an alter-ego! How cool is that? On Friday's it "morphs" into Murasaki Kuroki (紫 くろ喜). The menu changes it's focus and only serves Japanese soy based soba/ramen. Murasaki means purple in Japanese and it's sushi restaurant slang for soy sauce because I guess the color is sort of purple? The noodle dishes appear to be prominently soy, duck, and Japanese leek based noodle dishes which are very traditional pairings in Japanese cuisine.  
  
  

If you're in the Tokyo area, I totally recommend paying Motenashi Kuroki a few visits! I promise you won't regret it.