Tsukemen? Suki! (I like it!)
Everyone knows about the classic Japanese noodles; ramen. But have you heard about its slightly less famous cousin, tsukemen? I won’t get into the etymology of the word, but it’s basically a noodle dish where the noodles and soup are separated. The noodles are served cold while the soup is served hot and serves as a dipping sauce. You eat it like how you would eat a cold soba, except you dip the cold noodles into a hot soup. The soup is typically saltier than the usual ramen soup, so it’s not recommended to consume it entirely without diluting it first. As such, some places even offer to top up your broth with hot water after consuming the noodles so you can drink it afterward.
It’s not as common as ramen, so it’s hardly ever found outside of Japan. With that said, I wanted to introduce it to my partner on our trip. Ironically, her introduction to tsukemen was by chance, as we were actually looking for a ramen place for lunch. During our Osaka leg of the trip, we mainly hit up the usual tourist spots, such as Dontonbori. As you can imagine, it’s incredibly busy throughout the day so even finding a place to eat at odd hours wasn’t an easy task. Nonetheless, we managed to find a small place tucked off the main Dontonbori shopping street called Kamakura Soup with Noodles (I did not know then. but apparently they have restaurants around Japan so not so small after all). It was a small tsukemen restaurant with around 9 counter seats surrounding the kitchen itself. There weren’t any waiting staff, just the 2 chefs working that day who handed out our menus. A simple no frills menu with just their special tsukemen and different toppings that you could add to it. You can also choose the size of the noodle portion with a small additional charge. Naturally, I ordered the full tsukemen with all the toppings available with a large portion of noodles. Because it’s a small restaurant, you’re almost rubbing shoulders with your seat neighbor. But it also provides an amazing view of the chefs at work. While we were waiting, we couldn’t help but watch with eagerness and curiosity as the chefs prepared our meals. You could feel the warmth of the boiling water meters away as they cook the noodles and immediately take them out and shake off the excess water to prevent it from bloating up. If you spoke any Japanese, you could probably even strike up a conversation with the chefs, like the elderly couple that sat beside my partner. Funny story, the elderly man thought that the younger of the 2 chefs weren’t Japanese and praised him for his proficiency in Japanese, only to be informed that the chef was indeed Japanese.
Anyway, a few minutes after ordering we were served our tsukemen. It’s normal for dishes to look amazing on the menu, and falling a little short when you get served them. But this tsukemen looked exactly the same as the one depicted in the menu. The chef instructed us on how to eat and proceeded to work on the next orders shortly after. I won’t be reviewing my partner’s tsukemen as it was basically the same, just without additional toppings. So onto the review, I tried the noodles and soup separately at first before trying them together. The noodles were cooked perfectly. It’s a weird way to describe them but they were very elastic in a good way, like how a rubber band stretches and snaps back. They had a nice bite to them, and they were also thicker than the usual ramen noodles which helps when absorbing the soup later. The soup itself had cabbage in them and meat in them, which I believe was pork belly. It was incredibly rich but light as the cabbage had soaked all the salt and fat of the pork belly rendered into the soup itself. Together, the noodles definitely absorbs the soup well and the difference in temperature definitely makes you go “ooohhh!” The longer you soak the noodles, the warmer they get (obviously) but I found that the best way to have it was to dip the noodles, get some soup on your spoon and eat the noodles with it. Served with the noodles was the usual cha shu (sliced pork) served cold which was odd, a ramen egg, some bamboo shoots, seaweed, some coriander and a couple yuzu zest sliced thinly . I thought it was a little dry, but it still tasted good with the soup. The half boiled egg was done to the usual standard; solid on the outside and gooey on the inside. The bamboo shoots were crunchy and cold, providing a different texture to the dish. The lemon zests were a peculiar addition, but when you have it with the noodles and soup, you soon understand why it’s there. The acidic and sour nature of the lemon cuts right through the richness of the soup and amazed me, as I’ve not encountered this before. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more lemon zest in ramen and tsukemen in the future.
I won’t lie, I could’ve had another bowl after my first one. It was that good. The total price of the meal was ¥2140, or about S$21. An incredible deal for lunch at a popular tourist shopping district in Osaka. So was it worth it, and would I go again?
Yes and yes. To be honest, you could probably order a variation with less toppings for a cheaper price, or you could even find somewhere that served cheaper tsukemen around Osaka or Japan. But I loved everything about the restaurant, from the cozy interior to the food itself. Everything about it screamed of a dining experience you would find on The Midnight Diner series on Netflix. Like I said before, the menu was simple and all of them were variations of the one dish the restaurant specialized in, tsukemen. I’d rather a restaurant have a couple items on the menu that are great, than a restaurant with over 100 items. I would definitely recommend anyone shopping around the Dontonbori area to try this place out, as opposed to the usual Ichiran ramen (which was located across the restaurant). Kamakura might be a national chain of ramen restaurants, but the waiting time to eat here is arguably lesser than Ichiran or Ippudo. The only downside is that there is limited seating. We were lucky to snag up the remaining 2 seats in the restaurant, but one can imagine the wait during dinner.
Overall, I would rate this experience a 8/10. I think it featured a great dish, a quiet and cozy interior with chefs that definitely knew what they were doing. If I’m ever in the vicinity of a Kamakura branch that serves tsukemen, I would definitely pop my head in for a meal, hopefully a seat will be waiting for me.
