Learning the art of eating "tsukemen"

-
After visiting the highest man-made point in Tokyo, I felt like I worked up a serious craving for ramen. And where's the best place to have authentic Japanese ramen? Japan! One of the famous ramen restos in Tokyo is Rokurinsha. The queues here are reportedly very long... the food was reportedly that good. Fortunately for me, Rokurinsha has a branch very close to the Tokyo SkyTree. I had to get some help finding it, of course, because the name's written in Japanese. 


When I got there, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to wait to be seated or if I should just go and grab a seat. Good thing was that one of the servers noticed that I was clueless. He asked me to wait while he found a table for me and then directed me to the ordering machine. It's like a vendo machine, actually: put in your money, click on the food you want to eat, and collect the change, if applicable. (I've encountered such machine previously: in Matsuya Shinsaibashi!)


After I finished ordering, I was led to a bar table with a good view of the open kitchen. An advantage for me because the servers could check on me if I had questions or if I needed anything.


Within a few minutes, my ramen arrived. But it didn't look like regular ramen. It was basically a deconstructed ramen dish! There were two bowls: one contained the noodles and a soft-boiled egg; the other bowl contained a thick sauce with the meat and other ingredients.


It is called tsukemen and there is a special way of eating it. That's according to the English pamphlet that the servers kindly provided me.


Of course, I followed the instructions to the letter.
     (1) Dip a biteful of noodles into the sauce.
     (2) Once soaked by the sauce, eat the noodles.
     (3) Add vinegar and pepper to the sauce.
     (4) Repeat steps 1 and 2.
     (5) Once the noodles are finished, ask for soup to dilute the sauce.
     (6) Slurp away!

Note that there were no instructions on how to eat the egg. So I just ate it after I've eaten the noodles. I also dipped the egg in the sauce (Steps 1–6, but with egg).

I ended up enjoying the tsukemen! It had the right balance of the different flavours, with umami being the overarching theme until I added vinegar and pepper. Then the ramen took on a whole different character all together! I wonder where this is being served in the Philippines. I want to try it here too.

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for dropping by!

Before moving on, please share your thoughts or comments about the post. :)

Thanks again!

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe...
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in...
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma...
Read more