New reason to visit Japantown
The first time I knew I loved Japantown was Aug. 23, 2011. A friend and I were wandering around the western end of the Japan Center in search of a drink. It was probably 10 p.m. and the mall was basically closed, but in a fluorescent-lit corner on the second floor, in an otherwise empty corridor, we saw an open door and walked into Mogura.
It was dim inside. The walls in the front of the room were dressed to look like stone; everywhere else was lined with faux bamboo. A long, continuous, staple-shaped bench wrapped around the bar, and four businessmen were seated in a row with satisfied smiles and the relaxed posture of perfectly buzzed drinkers.
We found a seat on a short end of the staple and ordered two Sapporos. The other patrons gave us a quick nod and then returned their attention
to the thick binders of karaoke song choices in front of them. One guy handed his selection to the bartender on a slip of paper the size of a fortunecookie fortune, and the bleepbloopy MIDI version of an unfamiliar Japanese tune started up. The man sang along from his seat at the bar, then passed the mike to his neighbor when he was finished.
After a few more too-expensive beers, my friend and I worked up the nerve to join the musical fray, and tried our best not to kill the vibe with our interpretations of John Denver and Jay-Z. Eventually the bar’s owner came out from the back to have a peek at the newcomers. She wore a kimono and her hair was locked in a swooping vertical salute, like Cameron Diaz in “There’s Something About Mary.” My friend and I waved and got a smile in return. We stuck around for a couple hours, singing duets with our new pals and thanking our lucky stars that we’d decided to see what was going on upstairs in Japantown. At some point, I snapped a blurry photo so I could remember the exact date forever.
I returned to Mogura many times, learning a little bit more about it with each visit. I heard other patrons refer to the owner as Mama-San, and found out she ran another bar in the back called Club Mari, an invitationonly place. It’s a hostess bar, Yelp whispered. I always stuck to the front room, but would try to sneak a peek into Club Mari whenever I passed by on my way to or from the restroom. I spent my birthday at Mogura and encouraged friends to do the same.
One night, a year or two later, I sat at the bar with a few friends and asked to see the karaoke book. The bartender explained politely that there was no more karaoke. They didn’t have an entertainment permit, she said, so they weren’t doing it anymore. I looked quizzically toward the blinking blue and green lights of the karaoke equipment and the dizzying screen saver playing on the television, and realized that I’d ruined paradise.
This is how I experienced Japantown in my 20s (and early 30s) — as a destructive voyeur indulging in the kitsch and decadence. We’d gorge on shabu shabu and test the limits of the all-you-can-drink policy at Cafe Mums. We used to sing karaoke at Do Re Mi, until we discovered Town Music down the street and its carefree attitude about what goes down in its rooms. My friend fell off the Peace Pagoda one night, and I’ve been asked to leave Dimples. If you’ve been to Dimples, you understand what it takes to get kicked out of Dimples.
Two or three times a year, we’d go to Benihana. Danny Bowien introduced me to YakiniQ, the all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue joint across the street from the mall, and for a little while that’s where we’d go eat and drink too much. (Quick side note: My belief is that AYCE K-BBQ places can only stay decent for a couple months — beyond that, they begin to crumble under the pressure of serving that much meat and that much soju to that many drunk kids.)
I feel guilty about all of this. San Francisco’s Japantown is one of the only remaining in the country. It’s a place with history — a history that includes earthquakes, migration, internment, displacement and a sizable community. But I only ever went there to scratch an itch for beer and teppanyaki.
In my defense, I don’t know anyone else who has spent as much time trying to know Japantown. When Noboru Inoue was still slicing fish at Ino Sushi, Danny and I used to bring him his favorite mushroom-and-anchovy pizza to get on the good side of his notoriously grumpy demeanor. I’ve found more utility than joy in curry at On the Bridge, the sushi boat at Isobune, packaged meals from Nijiya, and the washoku and equally bad yoshoku food at Mifune. The ramen around Japantown has always been subpar, too. Until Marufuku. The shop opened a little more than a month ago, right next door to Club Mari, in the former Sapporo-ya space. (Both signs were still up when I was there last week.) Marufuku specializes in variations on two bowls: chicken paitan and Hakata-style tonkotsu ramen. Both paitan and tonkotsu are rich soups that appear cloudywhite from the long, hard cooking of pork or chicken bones. Hakata-style usually implies thin noodles and pork broth. (Ippudo, if you’re familiar, is basically a Hakata-style shop.) Paitan is similar, but with chicken broth.
I tend to think of paitan and tonkotsu as low-hanging fruit. It’s much easier to hide mistakes or shortcuts in a sticky, fatty bone broth than in a light, clear dashi or chicken broth. (I’m told that Hinodeya, a new shop around the corner from the Japan Center, specializes in dashi ramen, and I’m keen to check it out.)
But neither of the broths at Marufuku are crazy heavy, which is my other issue with most tonkotsu or paitan soups. The tonkotsu lacks any of the stink that can arise from simmering unrinsed or low-quality pork bones. It’s not especially porky, in fact, and the paitan doesn’t taste that strongly of chicken, either. But they’re both solid, balanced soups, rich but not fatty, salty and a little seaweed-y.
The noodles at Marufuku are thin, chewy and slurpable. Ivan Orkin, my ramen shaman, has noted on numerous occasions that the hallmark of a well-crafted bowl is when the noodles and broth stick to one another as you suck them up into your mouth, and this seems to be the case at Marufuku. Neither of the bowls is overly outfitted with toppings (though I wouldn’t mind if every shop outside of Hokkaido stopped serving corn kernels in its ramen). Each has a soft-boiled egg, nori, bean sprouts, sliced kombu, scallions and the aforementioned corn. The tonkotsu is ornamented with thin slices of pork belly, and the paitan comes with sweet, chewy pieces of chicken breast (a.k.a. “chicken chashu”). An order of paitan DX includes a soy-braised chicken leg on the side. The chicken sits atop a bed of wilted but crunchy bean sprouts, and comes with no indication of how you’re meant to eat it with your ramen. Think of it like the tow package on a new SUV: nice to have, probably not necessary.
The rest of the menu has some nooks worth exploring. A small rice bowl on the side will put you over from full to almost uncomfortably full, but both the spicy cod roe and the pork belly bowls are worth a ride. The Marufuku salad is refreshing and gently bitter, with a sweet plum dressing that smacks pleasantly of shiso.
There are still a few bolts to be tightened, of course. I’m not a fan of the pickled ginger spears that come atop the tonkotsu — for me, they take the soup from ramen back to its roots as Chinese noodle soup. Both broths could come hotter, as they could almost everywhere else in the city. The karaage is dry and the crust looks mottled, like chocolate chip cookie dough. And I didn’t love that all my food arrived at once, as it forced me to strategize about how to proceed in a sequence that would prevent my noodles from overcooking in the broth: Leave the salad undressed, sacrifice the rice bowl, ignore the chicken leg, start with the ramen.
I’m grateful for Marufuku. It’s a convincing reason to eat in Japantown, and it gives me hope for the possibility of further upgrades in the Japan Center. On my two recent visits, I sat down, I had ramen, and I left happily. I didn’t even glance in the direction of Mogura.