A modest warmth. Bacon sounds like such a great idea for noods. Open up the flavour packet and the wonderful aroma of synthetic smoked bacon wafts up. But by the time you've added the water and given it a stir it's all gone to pot. You need to add salt to get through it, otherwise it's like eating cotton wool.
Floury and stodgy, Boring noodles that you have to work through. And then you get the powdery flavouring which is just a bit too chemical tasting. Other creations include spicy arrabiata ramen with pancetta and roasted tomatoes, foie gras ramen with orange jam and blueberry miso, and black ramen made with bamboo ash dipped into a mix of miso and onions caramelised for 45 days. Suddenly Hideto jumps up from the table and announces that he needs to go.
He leaves me with a bowl of industrial-strength tonkotsu — pig heads viciously boiled in litre iron vats for 48 hours — and a rundown of his itinerary for the next week: first to Singapore, then to Phnom Penh for the opening of his first Cambodian shop, then to New York to roll out a new line of dry ramen dishes, back to Hong Kong to scout new locations, then home to Fukuoka for 36 hours before repeating the loop.
The world, he says, is hungry for ramen. Kamimura has been whispering all week of a sacred hour ramen spot located on a two-lane highway in Kurume, 25 miles south of Fukuoka, where truckers go for the taste of true ramen. The shop is massive by ramen standards, big enough to fit a few trucks along with those drivers, and in the mid-afternoon a loose assortment of castaways and road warriors sit slurping their noodles. Near the entrance a thick, sweaty cauldron boils so aggressively that a haze of pork fat hangs over the kitchen like waterfall mist.
While few are audacious enough to claim ramen is healthy, tonkotsu enthusiasts love to point out that the collagen in pork bones is great for the skin. Where there is tonkotsu, there is rarely a wrinkle.
Kurume treats tonkotsu like a French country baker treats a sourdough starter — feeding it, regenerating, keeping some small fraction of the original soup alive in perpetuity. Old bones out, new bones in, but the base never changes.
The mother of all ramen. Maruboshi Ramen opened in , and you can taste every one of those years in the simple bowl they serve. There is no fancy tare, no double broth, no secret spice or unexpected toppings: just pork bones, noodles, and three generations of constant simmering. The flavour is pig in its purest form, a milky white broth with no aromatics or condiments to mitigate the purity of its porcine essence. His eyes light up, he wiggles his shoulders, and a childish smile breaks out across his face.
What do you think? It takes time to draw out the soul of ramen — some say hours; others, like Kamimura, say lifetimes. When the owners spot Kamimura, they hurry over to our booth, offering paper cups of coffee to go with our mystic soup.
He catches my eyes, looks down at my unfinished bowl, then back up at me. Super noodles: the rise and rise of ramen. Classic Ramen. Photograph: Matt Goulding. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies.
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