RAMEN RAGE
New restaurant’s in-your-face bowls draw crowds
Do we really need another ramen shop? I know it gets chilly out there and for some of us, a bowl of ramen is better than a down jacket. But lately, there have been a lot popping up around town.
One is Ramen Gojiro and the lineup, which curled around the corner when I first walked by, says we haven’t yet peaked and that there’s something to this place. It’s partly the allure of delicious food for $10 to $14. You might walk in with a nice concave stomach and leave with it ballooned into a convex bulge.
When I went for dinner one evening, I made sure I went good and early, arriving at about 5:30 p.m. Good call. By 6 p.m., it was full.
Next to us at the long communal table (a cool one at that, with raw edges), I saw how pumped people can get for ramen. The dad ordered two bowls of ramen along with gyoza, while mom and young daughter had more normal-sized needs.
This is assertive, in-your-face ra-
men. It’s Jiro-style ramen, which has a denser, richer broth and the dish is normally piled high with bean sprouts to balance out the abura (fat). The broth here is made with pork bones, pork head and some chicken bones.
Owner Kaito Kaneyoshi previously opened Ramen Butcher in Chinatown. It also prompted huge lineups in its early days.
Gojiro is a play on Godzilla and Jiro; the latter is borrowed from Ramen Jiro, which has dozens of shops in Tokyo. “Gojiro is like the Japanese way of saying Godzilla,” says Kaneyoshi.
There’s a basic broth, while variations on it include Bakamori — crazy stupid amount, as Kaneyoshi put it — meaning more meat, more noodles, more toppings, more everything. And there’s Spicy and Spicy Bakamori, which come in mild, spicy, or atomic breath levels. Chili is the main ingredient in the spicy broth, but there are two toppings: chicken karaage (deep fried chicken) and chasu (roast pork). I think a soft-boiled egg with an oozy, orange yolk would be much appreciated as another option.
If you have neat freak tendencies, go the Tsukemen route where noodles and broth are served separately, sparing you the drama of wrestling with a big bowl of noodles. You take the noodles, which come hot or cold, and dip and eat. The other reason for separating out noodles from broth is to control the broth absorption. The noodles will drink the broth, just like you.
I learned there is a refined way of eating big, slurpy bowls of noodles upon watching a young Asian woman, daintily removing just enough noodles from the tangle. No Medusa-head clumps with noodles trailing deep into the bowl.
I liked the broth and I liked the noodles. The basic broth better than the spicy, which if you’re tack- ling the whole bowl can be overwhelming. The noodles had the chew and springiness I like.
The broth was indeed thicker, denser and Bakamori was, as described, a crazy stupid amount.
Gojiro is run in partnership with Menya Kouji, which operates about 150 ramen shops in Japan. They give Kaneyoshi the freedom to operate it the way he wants. “Our company chairman is called the ramen god in Japan. Each location has a different flavour, depending on the chef,” he says. “They help us to whatever extent we need.” In fact, tsukemen style ramen was created by the company.
There are three side dishes, should you have an enormous amount of stomach space — chicken karaage (the same that you can have with ramen), house-made gyoza and fried rice with pork chasu and egg.
No dessert. Are you kidding me? Just say “Gochisosama” (that was delicious) and take your leave.