みんか minca ramen factory: of pork and production

by rameniac | 11 Nov 2008

Minca is a gem, a relatively undiscovered little treasure on the quieter side of New York’s East Village. This decidedly misnamed “ramen factory” - and there’s absolutely nothing manufactured about it - serves up one of the top three or four bowls of ramen in Manhattan, yet for all my Ippudo and Setagaya-slurping friends in the city, none of them had ever even heard of the place.

Tucked away on a residential-looking stretch of 5th Street, it’s easy to miss. Step inside and one is transported directly to Japan, if in countless subtle ways. There’s the jazz wafting over the speaker system, the idiosyncratic Western touches and the modest, not thoughtless décor, absent the Orientalist clichés that blight most Japanese restaurants in the U.S. If a ramen shop could be judged on atmosphere alone, Minca would score high marks for simply pandering to no one save the whims of its owner, one Shigeo Kamada from Japan’s Chugoku region, midway between Osaka and the southern island of Kyushu.

Indeed, Minca is the best and most quintessential sort of ramen shop, one evolved simply from the tastes of a sole chef/owner.  In Kamada’s case, that means a menu centered around a torigara and tonkotsu blended soup, flavored with either soy sauce or salt.

I had already eaten on this particular afternoon, yet, caught between lunch and dinner (yes, dinner was still to come), I sat down to a bowl of Minca’s shoyu mixed broth ramen with no particular expectations other than to note the distinct acrid smell in the air characteristic of the best neighborhood tonkotsu ramen shops in - gasp! -  suburban Fukuoka, the sort of funk that has Tokyo natives clearing wide of joints with their noses pinched.

And the factory does not disappoint. This mixed chicken and pork bone soup, all frothy and bubbly, is rich and almost cement-like in consistency, steeped with garlic and the burnished aroma of shoyu to a nice, umber hue.  Thick silver dollars of of buttery, marinated chashu, fresh kikurage wood ear mushrooms, and (now this is more like it!) thin, dense, Hakata-style noodles add up to a solid, solid bowl of noodles geographically placeable, at least in spirit, midway between Osaka, Kyushu, and the creative animus of chef Kamada’s mind.

Throw in a remarkable ebi gyoza with whole shrimp, all tails-a-poppin’ right out from underneath dumpling skin – the sort of thing one might find at say, a gyoza stadium, and consider me sold. If Minca is a ramen factory, fire up the smokestacks and sign me up for the quality assurance inspection team.