The light, a washed-out gray all day, weakens at sunset. Wisps of sugar snow crystals collect and shimmy across Skinker in undulations. Where it hits the windshield, it instantly melts and starts trickling down. There’s an empty parking space directly in front of Nami Ramen’s new location. Even so, by the time the meter’s plugged and we’ve hustled to the door, the chill is already wrapping around our shoulders like an icy blanket before we’re greeted with the porky perfume of a vintage broth, the eggy scent of noodles on the boil.
Ramen restaurants are not places for lingering. Subayaku ajiwau is the expression in Japanese: “savored quickly.” Ramen is relished—or should be—in a few completely concentrated moments, while the steam is still hanging like a mist over the bowl. There isn’t a lot of emphasis on atmosphere, which is superfluous. Instead, the focus should be on that bowl that will soon arrive.
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Nami Ramen’s menu is a motley miscellany aimed to appeal to a range of tastes. Such diversions as the preciously titled Show Me-Shoyu Ramen and Volcano Ramen are for the casual fan, the dilettante. It may be necessary for business, but the respectable ramen place should rest its reputation on its specialty.
At Nami, the tonkotsu broth ramen is called a “signature” dish, and that’s good enough for us. There’s nothing better to fortify oneself on a bitter night. There are dozens of regional ramen options from Japan and dozens more adaptations, riffs, and hybrid offspring in U.S. ramen restaurants. Tonkotsu is still the most reliable rendition and the one which, if offered, is the infallible way of determining quality.
Nearly every soup or stew so very much depends on the broth, and in few of them is that broth more critical than in tonkotsu ramen. Tonkotsu (literally “pork bone”) is actually less broth than a kind of gravy. It’s the color of a cloudy winter sky. Everything about it—the porky aroma, the silky, supple texture—suggests richness.
Ramen lore has it that tonkotsu was the result of a kitchen accident in Kurume, on Japan’s southernmost island of Kyushu. Most protein broths in Japanese cooking are distilled from chicken. Pork historically had little purchase in the Japanese diet except in Kyushu. Chinese immigrants to Kyushu started making pork broths more popular in the ’30s. The story has it that a cook left a stockpot of pork bones on the boil too long, gelatinizing the marrow. (He may have been related to the cook on The Hill who accidentally dropped those fabled ravioli in the mythic hot oil. Clumsy chefs seem to represent an unsettlingly percentage of culinary masterpieces.)
At least 24 hours are necessary to render a presentable tonkotsu broth. At Nami, the giant aluminum kettles are a good sign. Here’s another: Sit at a table facing the kitchen and even though the counter is high, you can watch the cooks do a double dip when preparing a bowl.
That magic broth is unalloyed, just bone water. There’s lots of lip-smacking collagen, unctuous but more than a little short on taste. What transforms ramen broth is the tare, the seasoning. Nami’s tare is what’s called shio-tare, or salt-based, and it gives broth nearly all its flavor. It’s ladled into the bowl before the broth itself. (There are a few places around that pre-mix the tare and the broth. Pre-mixed broth and tare has a consistent color in the bowl. When it’s done right, as it is at Nami, you’ll see little puddles of what looks like oil floating on the surface.)
It’s diverting to try to guess the elements in the tare at a ramen place. You can ask—but most ramen chefs are more likely to share their bank account numbers than to reveal those secret ingredients. We’re guessing there’s some soy sauce, probably some niboshi or tiny, flavor-intense dried fish, as well as a couple of different salts, maybe some fish sauce. Whatever it is, it’s a superior tare, and it makes for an outstanding tonkotsu broth.
And then there’s the matter of noodles. Ramen noodles have different personalities, from very soft to really firm. Tonkotsu-style ramen, most ramen aficionados agree, is best with firm noodles, called barikata in Japanese. The problem is the majority of ramen places in the Midwest get their noodles from one supplier, and that supplier aims to hit the happy medium, so the noodles are best prepared at the futsu level, a kind of serviceable “medium,” which works well. Still, it will be a big step forward for ramen in the Midwest when restaurants, like mattress shops and massage centers, start offering different levels of firmness.
That’s in the future, though. Right now, the bowl of tonkotsu is in front of us, steaming, fragrant. Again, there isn’t time to waste. Contemplation and rumination over the details of a hot bowl of ramen, a reverential analysis, are the affectations of the tatsujin-buri, the “pretend connoisseur.” Dig in, with chopsticks in one hand and a fat spoon in the other.
Atop the tokotsu floats a generous, thick cutlet of chashu roast pork; a split, boiled egg with a center like a sunrise custard; a dark crackly leaf of sea laver nori; menma bamboo shoots that are sun-dried and fermented. It’s all simultaneously chewy, meaty, savory, with that pleasant, aromatic undertaste of the tare. Nami’s portions are liberal. It’s enough for a happy dinner, although a side of fried chicken karaage chunks, splattered with a garlicky aioli is a welcome second course.
In short order, there is only a sad pool left in the bottom of our bowl. Outside, it doesn’t feel any warmer—and that doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon. While there’s still plenty of winter left, there’s also plenty of ramen to enjoy—or, at least, to help us get through these bitterly cold days.
