Saturday, August 7, 2010

Ebisu (A Ramen shop)

I wish I could go to Tokyo to have Ramen so often, but the round-trip train fare is about 20 dollars. So in that case I have to take into account the fare in addition to the price of Ramen. I said you can have superb Ramen in Tokyo, which is still true, but there are several good Ramen shops in my city as well.

I don't know when this Ramen shop "Ebisu" opened, but this shop has been so popular for about a decade. And since this shop is close to the center of my city, it is always crowded especially during lunch hours. "Ebisu" means some folks who lived north of the Kanto Region in ancient times.

I came here on a weekday, and as you can see there were some workers at the counter seats. There were only about 15 seats, so some customers had been kept waiting until they were seated. 

As I introduced before, this is Gyouza, or dumplings that have boiled ground pork, minced onion, garlic and so on. You might think this Gyouza is no different from the other Gyouza, but this tastes much better if you dip a Gyouza in the yellow paste on the saucer. The paste tasted sour, and included some citron. Gyouza is basically fried with oil, so light taste stuff like citron goes very well with Gyouza.

And this Ramen is called "Ebisu Ramen". It's the flagship Ramen of this shop, and the taste of this broth was really light. But the thick tastes of the boiled egg and Chaashuu, which is the sliced pork, stood out in contrast to the light broth that should have been seasoned with a bit of salt.

I'm sure you know melon, but there are some kinds of yellow melon available in Japan. The most expensive and famous yellow melon is called "Yuubari", and it is harvested in "Yuubari" city in Hokkaido. But I think this was a bit different kind that did look like Yuubari. Compared to ordinary melons, this was a bit sweeter and had less flavor, which is also true of the real Yuubari melon.