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2014-02-18
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I love ramen for its versatility and seemingly infinite possibilities. I peer into a bowl of this noodle soup — sometimes thick and creamy, sometimes close to translucent, sometimes tawny, sometimes edging up on coal-colored and glinting darkly — and can’t begin to tell exactly what’s in there. Every restaurant’s ramen to me is distinct. Even every batch of a single restaurant’s ramen does.I inhale a ramen’s perfume and I’m still perplexed, still uncertain, though I can identify a few top notes:
I inhale a ramen’s perfume and I’m still perplexed, still uncertain, though I can identify a few top notes: almost definitely scallions, very possibly garlic, in a perfect world some spicy chilli. I can make out the concentrated pork bone essence of the soup. With my spoon I delve into the bowl of ramen and gulp down a mouthful, but a few components remain unknown. A few subtle differences, too. The taste of ramen isn’t just intricate and layered; it’s almost blurry, but a good blurry, an enthralling blurry, the kind of blurry in which gluttonous eaters gratifyingly indulge in.
At ICHIRAN, which is where many of the most dedicated ramen fans carry out their devotion, I would sometimes look up from my noodle soup and realize that I hadn’t conversed with my companions for a quite a while, and had in fact forgotten that they came with me. With ramen like ICHIRAN’s at its best, who needs conversation? For that matter, who needs company?
As a result the wait can stretch to more than a two to three hours unless you go there in the wee hours on weekdays. The waiting is quite tiresome so in the end there are obstacles to the ramen bliss here. There are challenges and compromises that you have to edit out of the ICHIRAN experience.
I appreciated ICHIRAN’s springy, slim house-made noodles, which accomplish the art of having delicacy and presence at the same time. I loved the unctuous and cream-colored broth of the tonkotsu ramen — with its slices of thinly sliced pork and its hints of garlic and its grassy whispers of scallion. The broth is thick, almost milky and altogether sublime.
An engrossing meal at that. You search slowly for noodles with your chopsticks, whirling and sipping the minutes away. Then you swap the chopsticks for a spoon, to see what else is left: some seaweed, some black fungus, some last bits of noodles. As the ramen gradually unveils itself, you fall unreservedly to its spell.
On a lighter note, don't forget to get the tofu dessert. It has an amazingly spongy and pudding-like texture that does not break up easily like the regular tofu.
張貼
