つけ麺 丸和 (Maruwa in Nagoya)

つけ麺 丸和 春田本店 

The history of tsukemen in Japan is deep. Generally, people know about Yamagishi-san and Higashi-Ikebukuro Taishoken. That shop has spawned dozens of other shops with the same name in the vicinity of Tokyo. And while the name Taishoken is a dead giveaway to a ramen shop's lineage (except when it is a different Taishoken!) this is largely a Tokyo thing, with half a century of history. When you leave the nation's biggest city, tsukemen is a much younger beast.

Maruwa is part of Nagoya's tsukemen history. Until recent years, even Osaka people would have to take a train out here to have some tsukemen. Truly a legend shop.

Maruwa began with Taishoken . . . kind of. Taishoken's tsukemen was an offshoot of tsukemen eaten at Marucho (丸長), an old shop in Tokyo, as a staff meal. Apart from Yamagishi-san, Karoku-san (嘉六) was another staff there. He didn't continue along the same path of fame, but he did open a shop in Saitama called Maruka (丸嘉) in 1969.

Fast forward many years. Kurumiya-san (久留宮) is living in his family home in Nagoya, above their rice shop. At some point, he has work in Saitama, meets a lady, marries, and moves in with his new inlaws. His inlaws include Karoku-san.

Fast forward a few more years to 2004. Kurumiya-san and Karoku-san are watching television and there is a special about Yamagishi-san and Taishoken. Karoku-san casually says how cool it is that Yamagishi-san has become famous. He boasted that he had actually eaten tsukemen before Yamagishi-san. This was the first time Karoku-san had heard about any of this. He wanted to make his father-in-law famous.

Karoku-san introduced him to a branch of Marucho in Saitama, and he trained. The master there, Amari-san (甘利), would prepare soup and noodles from 11:00pm until 3:00am every day, and serve 100 bowls from 8:00am until 11:00am. Oh, and he was 70 years old.

After some time, he returned to his home in Nagoya and opened Tsukemen Maruwa (つけ麺 丸和) in the same building that housed his family's rice shop (also called Maruwa).

TL;DR

Maruwa is a descendent of the first tsukemen created in the 1950s in Tokyo.

The menu is quite large, but you should try either the original recipe Karoku Tsukemen or the modern-style Maruwa Tsukemen.

Or one of each. Both are served in a hot iron pot as an homage to TETSU, who put a hot iron stone in your soup to keep it hot.

The menu is larger now, with limited bowls like local favorite Taiwan mazesoba and ramen dishes.

There are actually half a dozen or so shops in the Maruwa group. The original shop is wonderful, though, so you should try and make it there if you can.

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Relief for Australia Ramen at Soranoiro

ソラノイロ

Remember January 2020? Australia was hit by horrible wildfires. We thought it was the worst thing that could happen this year. Then a few other things happened, and people generally moved on to the other problems of the world.

Well, Ramen Adventures is around eight months behind on the posts, so let's revisit January 2020.

Soranoiro teamed up with Gaku, a robata-yaki restaurant from Sydney, Australia. Robata-yaki is a traditional style of cooking in Japan. Coals are placed in a large sandpit and skewers of meat roasted around it. Gaku also does ramen.

Gaku and Soranoiro's special popup was also an event to raise funds for a bushfire charity. How cool!

Five kinds of shellfish coquillage (コキヤージュ), a kind of French soup. It was buttery and full of ocean flavors. Definitely something new.

Great one-off bowl. The shrimp toast melted into the soup as I ate the noodles. All kinds of interesting textures going on here. They also did wagyu ramen during this charity event, but I'm glad I went with the mussel soup.

If you would like to donate to an Australian bushfire relief, check out the Bushfire Foundation.

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Mashi no Mashi in Roppongi, Tokyo

 Mashi no Mashi Tokyo

I had to do it. No matter how much I didn't want to spend $100 on a bowl of ramen, I had to at least try this one once. One part fueled by the tourism boom, one big part hype, and one part top tier ingredients. This is Wagyu Mafia's Jiro-style ramen, now available in Tokyo.

Complete with the made-for-Instagram food pose by the staff.

So what's the deal? How do we arrive at an 11,000 yen bowl of ramen in Tokyo in 2020?

Wagyu Mafia is the brainchild of Hisato Hamada and Takafumi Horie. It started as a member's only wagyu beef restaurant in 2016. The point was to serve the most expensive cuts of beef, bought without consideration of budget, eaten by the elites of the Japanese foodie scene. CEOs and their mistresses sat next to independently wealthy heiresses from Hong Kong. Meals were somewhere around $600, with everyone getting a slightly different bill.

But that's just the beginning. Word of this exclusive wagyu restaurant skyrocketed when they bought the most expensive cow from the 2016 Kobe auction, a bovine with the highest recorded fat marbling in recorded history. Wagyu dishes were also having a big run overseas, and Instagrammable dishes like A5 wagyu with uni and caviar became a surefire way to garner attention. Wagyu Mafia jumped on this hype without thinking twice.

Soon the guys behind the Mafia were jet-setting around the world, doing popups and entertaining celebrities. David Beckham and Ed Sheeran are fans. Investors made things simple, and a Wagyu Mafia Hong Kong was opened. They also opened less exclusive yakiniku spots (in both Tokyo and Hong Kong) and crowdfunded a cutlet sandwich restaurant in Tokyo. 

Then came the ramen.

The name Mashi no Mashi along with the stark yellow colors in the shop are a give-away to any ramen nerd. This is Jiro style ramen. Mashi refers to an extra amount of a particular topping in Jiro shops. Want extra garlic? Ninniku mashi. Want even more? Ninniku mashi mashi.

Bones are cooked for 24 hours to bring out maximum meat flavors. Noodles are thick and rough. Bean sprouts, cabbage, and plenty of garlic constitute the non-meat toppings. Chashu is thick-cut wagyu beef, stewed eight hours.

In the end it is kind of Jiro-esque. Real Jiro is much heavier, but Mashi no Mashi tries their best.

Want to know what I thought of it? This was a great bowl. Everything is well made and I definitely crushed it. Is it worth over $100? That's a tough one.

In a value-for-wagyu situation, no way. I can go to my favorite yakiniku spot and spend around $60 for a fatty beef feast. For a bit more I could go somewhere like Oniku Karyu for a wicked wagyu course. The volume of wagyu topping here was also kind of sad. You would think for $100 they would really pile it on. I heard you can ask for the wagyu mashi mashi to get around triple the amount (for a price).

If you are after the experience of trying mega-expensive casual food, this is something you must eat. 

If you are, like me, a ramen hunter in Japan who's list of shops to hit in Tokyo is dwindling, you gotta do it.

I'd say that if you were a YouTuber looking for a viral hit, this might work, though the algorithm doesn't really work that way anymore.

In the end, I'm of the opinion that anything interesting in the ramen world is worth it. While Mashi no Mashi's bowl is pricey, other less expensive wagyu-topped bowls have been popping up here and there.

Official Wagyu Mafia site here.

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