Mutekiya is Tripadvisor’s #1 rated ramen shop in Toshima, Tokyo. Located on the corner of a large intersection in Ikebukuro and surrounded by nondescript office buildings, at night Mutekiya is responsible for lining the sidewalks with people patiently waiting to enter the 15-seat establishment. Queuing in an orderly fashion is key in Japan–all members of the party must be present and any line-cutters are expelled from the premises, shop owners preferring to lose non-rule abiding customers than asking them to move to the end. Customers queue along the curved, wood panelled building, and are left to look at laminated menus and the restaurant’s online accolades which are plastered along the queueing area. There are no ticket machines here–every few minutes a host steps outside to take people’s orders. Groups in line are seemingly tourists from all over, with their backpacks and DSLR cameras, waiting excitedly as if in anticipation of a big event. Big things are inevitable at Tripadvisor’s #1 rated ramen shop in Toshima.
While ramen is a Japanese icon, the dish is originally Chinese, and its journey from China to Japan–when it happened and who was responsible–is unclear. Post-WWII Japan saw ramen evolve from its origins to what we recognize it to be today; still, there are different types of ramen, the changing elements of soup and toppings distinguishing one region from another. Robust broth bases range from chicken, pork, and seafood simmered with vegetables and dashi, then paired with seasonings like miso, shio (salt), and shoyu (soy sauce) and accompanied by varying combinations of toppings such as bamboo shoots, pickles, butter, corn, onions, and cha-shu (roasted pork) all depending on what region the particular ramen comes from. Even the thickness of the alkaline noodles is area dependent, but regardless, guarantee a high degree of slurpability with the correct amount of firmness, all slicked with hot salty soup, creating a stream of harmonious bites on limited time offer until you’ve gobbled it all down.
In the Fall of 2017, my parents and I visited Tokyo for the first time. During the planning stages of our trip, I crafted a long list of must-try foods and the most highly-rated places to find them. We stayed in Ikebukuro. See where this is going?
It was night time on our first full day in Tokyo. My parents and I just finished admiring an aisle of rice cookers at BIC Camera before deciding to go for dinner. We arrived at Mutekiya and lined up, our orders were taken, and we waited. When it was finally our turn to enter, we sat down at the long bar style seating, and came face to face with a multi-tiered set up containing a cylinder of disposable chopsticks, numerous seasonings (ie. pepper, soy sauce, vinegar, etc.), a pitcher of ice cold water with plastic cups, garlic cloves with a crusher, a box of kleenex, and a sign that said “Please let staff know if you need a paper apron or hairband. They will be provided at no cost.” Heaven. Our ramen arrived shortly after, the classic Mutekiya Ramen Nikutama for me and my mom (pictured below), and Honmaru-Black for my dad (pictured above).
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The broth was opaque in its milkiness, with three thick slices of fatty cha-shu fanned underneath expertly halved ajitsuke tamago (soy marinated soft boiled egg), all framed by a handful of wilted spinach congregating next to slats of firm bamboo shoots and delicate strings of scallion, with a piece of branded nori to top it all off. Upon first glance, it looked just like any bowl of ramen, but the immediate visual stand out was the cha-shu, which I’ve only seen sliced very thinly. I had eaten ramen at at least half a dozen ramen shops in Vancouver before this and none were particularly unique, so I wasn’t sure how much better ramen could get. After all, we were at a place that seemed to be occupied solely by tourists, and rated #1 on Tripadvisor. Putting those thoughts aside, my first course of action was to pick up my spoon and taste the broth, and–
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Whoa. I took another sip.
WHOA.
Not only was the broth seasoned perfectly, it contained a multitudinous array of flavours sandwiched between each other one thousand layers deep, spanning across dimensions in time and space that my mind couldn’t, and still cannot, comprehend. Think of every ramen broth you’ve ever had as a pond that you splish splash in to your heart’s delight–this broth was like swimming in the clear blue ocean in Hawaii, and you look down and tropical fish are sprinting away underneath you, and you feel like you’ve glimpsed into another world entirely.
I pulled myself together and began actually eating the ramen. The cha-shu was the best I ever had–it actually tasted like something, versus the thin slices of pork served at restaurants in Vancouver that are dry and lukewarm, languishing off the side of the bowl, functioning solely as stomach filler. The meat was hot, succulent and tender with the perfect ratio of fat and carried a slight charred flavour courtesy of its torched edges. Seasoned more mildly than the soup, combined with the rest of the components of the dish, it counteracted the intense savouriness of the broth that spun around the strands of noodles. We ate this ramen three years ago, and I can still remember the taste.
Eating Mutekiya ramen was a truly transformative moment, one that marked a shift in my perceptions and expectations of ramen. I saw that day how a bowl of noodles could be thoughtful; every element innately loaded with complicated histories and traditional technique, packaged and presented with utmost intent. Nothing can hold you back from experiencing it, not your shirt, your long hair, or your runny nose. That was our first day in Tokyo, and on our remaining days we experienced that same sensation with everything else we ate, from the tsukemen at Rokurinsha in Tokyo Station, to the tonkatsu at Butagumi Shokudō, to the onigiri at 7-Eleven, leading us to believe that all the Japanese food we ate before those moments were facsimiles, semi-successful attempts to capture unmatchable memories of pure perfection. However, when I describe to people what it was like eating ramen in Japan, I don’t say any of this. All I say is:
“It was like I was tasting ramen for the first time.”
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