陳麻家 chin-ma-ya: the capsaicin connection

by rameniac | 02 Jan 2009

Every now and then I like to tease myself. A few birthdays ago, a good friend gave me a twenty-five dollar gift certificate to Kinokuniya, a Japanese bookstore in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo. Kinokuniya has a decent stock of Asian-themed DVDs; it’s a good place to get your fix of Beat Takeshi or Cowboy Bebop, whatever your geeky poison. But the truth is I’ve yet to spend that gift certificate (sorry Bryan!), for every time I go to Kinokuniya, I talk myself out of actually buying anything. “Would owning a few more Jet Li movies dramatically improve my quality life?” Such are the thoughts that plague me, especially when it comes to retail therapeutic spending.

Yet lately, I’ve been unable to resist the sheer awesomeness of high-definition movies. And so this past Monday, I trundled off to Kinokuniya yet again, ready to put that old gift certificate towards something truly worth owning - perhaps Chungking Express or the Last Emperor on Blu-Ray.

Neither were in stock. But upon leaving the bookstore, I noticed a brand new ramen shop had opened across the courtyard. Camera in hand, wallet bulging with dosh I had yet to spend, I popped into Chin-Ma-Ya of Tokyo, located directly beneath Orochon Ramen.

An American outpost of a popular Japanese chain, Little Tokyo’s newest ramen shop up features tan-tan men, a spicy, Shisen-style take on ramen, alongside “Chin-Ma Han,” which is basically mabo tofu over rice. Token shoyu and shio ramen, gyoza and karaage fried chicken round out the spartan menu, which deliberately touts the health benefits of capsaicin and ma ratsu, the mixture of tongue-numbing Sichuan peppercorns and chilis used in signature Chin-Ma recipes.

Even cranked up full blast however, Chin-Ma’s tan-tan men is relatively mild stuff, inciting a low, constant burn on the tongue when it should sear. The soup is solid and authentic; with a saucy, almost peanut buttery consistency a la satay or Chinese sa-cha paste. It’s heavier and heartier than very similar soup found at Shisen Ramen in Torrance, and like Shisen, Chin-Ma uses an altogether inappropriate, generic and stiff, egg-based ramen noodle. The waiter himself lamented the fact, as getting proper kansui “white noodles” had proven too difficult. But whereas Shisen specializes in paiko pork cutlets and numerous ramen toppings, Chin-Ma’s tan-tan men garnishes are austere to the point of near non-existence - a still-cold, straight from the refrigerator clump of boiled spinach and a dollop of humorless ground pork grace each bowl, nothing more.

Overall, the “Chin-Ma Han” mabo tofu dish fares better, with a sweet, ketchupy undercurrent running through a barbed wire prickle of peppercorn heat. The Japanese-style fried chicken is likewise pleasant in its - what else - peppery crunch, while the token shoyu ramen is a massive, complete and underwhelming failure in the soup-to-noodle ratio department, with bland shoyu broth and an overabundance of generic, eggy men.
 

It will be interesting to see how Chin-Ma-Ya performs. The big Japan chains seem to be wising up to the growing popularity of ramen in the States, at least in cities like Los Angeles and New York. If just a few more of them expanded onto American shores, we might yet reach that critical tipping point where ramen can finally and fully enter the popular consciousness of hamburgers and pizza. For now, there’s a new Shisen-style tan-tan player in town, and that’s not a bad thing at all.