ミスターラーメン mr. ramen: where is the love?

by rameniac | 25 Sep 2006

If ramen were the movies, Mr. Ramen would be the equivalent of a midsummer flop - the embodiment of a soulless, focus-grouped misfire like the vast majority of films to come out of Hollywood’s major movie studios these days.  Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that the place is one of the oldest ramen shops in town, a neighbor to the venerable (if unspectacular) Suehiro and the newly revived (if even less spectacular) Far East Cafe. This is bad stuff, folks. Sort of like watching Dr. Doolittle 2 or paint dry, Mr. Ramen is a by-the-numbers affair. Only, without the happy ending.

In fact, the best thing about Mr. Ramen is the neon-noir noodle sign hanging in the shop window; if I were some pervy oyaji, I could sit there in its glow and watch chain-smoking furyo gals trickle in and out of the Miyako Inn all night. But eventually I’d have to order something, and that would be when things went horribly wrong.

I ordered a combo - a full portion of ramen with four pieces of gyoza and a slug of fried rice. The clues began to pile up, however. First off, there was no la yu on the condiment rack.  How can one eat gyoza without hot sesame oil? I didn’t want to have to ask for it after all.

I took a bite of the gyoza. Nothing spectacular. Kind of mushy and ineffective actually. I poked at the fried rice. Bland, but it was just a backup. In case I was still hungry after the ramen.

And there she was.

By all appearances, she was a lovely shoyu bowl - a generous portion of crystalline broth and well-scrubbed noodles, thin and shapely. But like a Hollywood starlet, such beauty is fleeting. After taking a few pictures the ramen had already begun to expand, soaking up broth and losing firmness. “Eh, it’s still ok,” I thought as I started to slurp away. Generic, slightly bland shoyu broth. Generic, fast expanding yellow noodles. As with a generic movie, sometimes you don’t realize how unsatisfying the whole experience was until after the fact.

I had my suspicions though.  The more telling clue, however, was the egg topping. Not a whole egg, not a half egg, but a QUARTER of a (badly) hard-boiled egg. How ketchi can you get? Never mind the bone-dry yolk and the fact that it tasted like it had been sitting in a refrigerator for several weeks, the fact that they gave only 1/4th of an egg kind of tipped me off. Cost-cutting? Lean times? A string of bad box office blunders? I don’t know since I never frequented Mr. Ramen to begin with, but it’s safe to say that now, I never will.

In case you were wondering, there was an inordinate amount of wakame in my bowl. The chasyu was actually ok, fairly tender and laced with fat. No doubt it was slumming - making an appearance merely to fulfill a studio contract for a bulk of the production costs.