福臨 fu lin: republic of china chow

by rameniac | 18 Sep 2008

It’s true that I tend to avoid non-Japanese ramen shops. Cataloging them all alongside the actual Japanese spots would require a few lifetimes of heart attacks and carb-related complications. One must have a means of separating or at least prioritizing the wheat flour from the chaff, and it doesn’t help when places like Ajisen, a Kumamoto-based ramen shop with Chinese-run franchises around the world, routinely fail to live up to the hype. In this fusion-friendly world, food remains one segment of culture wherein valuing a certain amount of ethnic authenticity is justifiable. Just ask the Japanese government, which only recently considered a means of certifying restaurants as being actual Japanese, much to the chagrin of Korean sushi chefs the world over. But honestly, how many people prefer Korean sushi or pho over the Japanese and Vietnamese stuff? There are some of you out there, I suppose.

Ramen is from China, and is regarded by the Japanese as Chinese food in much the same way Americans think of pizza as Italian. La mian or “pulled noodles,” as a dish, was simply fine-tuned to suit Japanese sensibilities, and to that end, many chukasoba shops in Tokyo and Yokohama remain wholly owned and operated by ethnic Chinese immigrants. Yet, the majority of those shops feel somehow more authentic, more relevant to this website than “ramen” served at Chinese restaurants abroad, at places like Ajisen and now Seattle’s Fu Lin, which advertises in katakana with lanterns and noren as if noodles were going out of style.

Frankly, Fu Lin has got it backwards. It’s a Chinese restaurant with roots in Taiwan, which takes numerous cultural cues from a history of Japanese occupation. The exchange is mutually commensurate; after all, Taiwan gave Japan Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant ramen. But here we have a case of a clearly non-Japanese restaurant that touts its ramen noodles and manages to get away with it, if largely for a lack of competition from Seattle’s spare Japanese restaurant community.

Yet, if you look past the pork chop rice and xiao long bao, if you close your eyes and ignore the mouth-feel of the plastic chopsticks, Fu Lin’s tonkotsu ramen nearly succeeds, and does in fact rank among Seattle’s best, though that’s modest praise in a town where the most beloved ramen shop is named Samurai Noodle. Frankly, I like Fu Lin better than Samurai. Sure, the ramen is not nearly as “authentic,” not with that sort of fragrant, aromatic cloud hovering over it as with most Taiwanese dishes, but the soup is loaded with much more umami and sweet glutamate subtlety than Samurai’s. More seafood in flavor than pork-bone grittiness, reminiscent of a thousand Chinese restaurants, it’s fairly thin and fluid and hardly qualifies as tonkotsu. The noodles are embarrassingly generic, the kamaboko is all wrong (come on!) and the wakame is both full of good intentions and severely misplaced. But it’s not bad overall, and Fu Lin redeems itself with its chashu, which bears a sweet, supple texture and pushes the entire bowl into the realms of ramen decency. Or at least, plausibility. 

I’d eat at Fu Lin again; I’d even order the ramen over the pork chop rice, and I’d likely come here before hitting up Samurai Noodle and possibly even Kaname. You can’t dispute the “side dishes,” as there’s basically an entire Chinese/Taiwanese restaurant menu at your disposal (those xiao long bao make for fine, juicy alternatives to gyoza). Maybe I should revise my approach and review a few other non-Japanese ramen shops I’ve come across. Fu Lin makes a worthy case for good food to be had; if only I had all the time (and stomach) in the world.