tokachi nitsu nana ramen: everything goes green

by rameniac | 04 Jan 2008

We all have that one friend who simply makes every dinner outing an imponderable proposition: the vegetarian, or, if the karmic gods are conspiring against you, the vegan. Its a small price to pay for living in a city of Bikram yogi, wellness gurus, and (fine, to use proper English) ridiculously fit birds. My good friend Neil is neither a fit bird nor a Bikram yogist (as far as I know), nor do I actually see him often enough to ponder many a dinner proposition, but he is, in fact a vegetarian, and one who can’t ever seem to get it into his head that vegetarian ramen is like the Loch Ness Monster; it probably exists, but good luck finding it.

So every time Neil asks me where he can get some good “vegetarian ramen,” I find myself at a loss. You can ask to hold the chashu, but pork and chicken bones are the ramen chef’s stock in trade, no pun intended. Rumors abound; sightings of vegetarian-friendly noodles, with nary a trace of meat in the soup, can apparently be had at Mr. Ramen and Takeshi Ramen, but let’s face it. The devil will don a Prada ski jacket before I get around to actually ordering such a thing off a menu.

Then again, I used to say the same thing about chicken pho, and a bowl of Tokachi Nitsu Seimen brand instant Nana Ramen didn’t seem an entirely unreasonable proposition when I recently came across a pallet of the stuff at Mitsuwa Marketplace. Considering I once ate a vegetarian hot dog weiner, how traumatic could it be?

And so, ensconced in the safety of my own room, far from possible public shame, I decided to sample this oddity, akin to eating a hamburger without a patty, a pizza without cheese.

Approved by the Japan Vegetarian Society - um, is that like Sokka Gakkai? - Nana Ramen (nana means “seven” in Japanese), is packed with seven different kinds of roughage: daikon radish, potatoes, paprika, carrots, onions, bamboo shoots, and na no hana, which roughly translates into “flower of greens”. And you know what? The purely vegetable-based soup turned out to be really, really good. Fried onions enlivened a clear, crisp broth, the seven vegetable toppings were crunchy and spirited, and the noodles, while mealy and insubstantially “healthy"-looking in cake form, rehydrated into full-bodied if slightly spaghetti-textured noodles.

Normally such a thing would sound awful. But for what it was, for vegetarian ramen, it was simply great. And I felt so healthy just eating it, that is, until I noticed the stats on the nutrition label: saturated fat: 0%, cholesterol: 0%, and finally, sodium: 3280 milligrams, or 100% of a 2,000 calorie diet. After all, salt is vegetarian-friendly. And let’s face it. Salt rocks!