125 Falcon Street, North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (02) 9955 0225
Open Thursday to Tuesday for lunch 12:00 noon - 2:30pm and dinner 5:00pm - 9:30pm
Gumshara Ramen
Shop 209 Eating World / 25-29 Dixon Street, Haymarket, New South Wales, Australia 0410 253 180
Open Sunday to Monday 11:30am - 8:30pm and Tuesday to Saturday 11:30am - 9:00pm
Note: All thick soup (tonkotsu) not available between 3pm-5pm as the bones in the stock pot are refreshed between lunch and dinner!
We went to
Sydney and ate ramen. Twice in two days. It wasn’t nearly enough. So what is so good about ramen anyway? Why
do people who visit Japan come back and complain about the broth and the noodle
and the meat and the general standard of product available in Australia? Or
do other people not do that? Is that just me being a dick, trying to conjure
the image of myself as a worldly traveller?
I think
other people must complain. I think that I’m a dick, but I think
other people must also complain.
A regular
pastime of mine is Google searching “best ramen in Melbourne”. I do this every
couple of weeks, with the hope of a new search result. There
is Kokoro. Ipondo. Ramen Ya. That’s about it so far. Some people say Momotaro is good but
either we visited there on a bad day or people are lying because it was not the
best ramen ever.
There is
so much great food in Melbourne – so many cuisines and high quality
restaurants. Possibly too many. However the sad fact I live with everyday is that there is no really,
actually good ramen in Melbourne. There is some quite tasty ramen and
there is one that does the egg properly and the noodle is generally pretty good
at the three places listed above. But there is a reason I still Google
search. There is a goal we have yet to reach.
In Japan
bad ramen shops don’t exist because they simply don’t survive. In
Japan the ramen situation is akin to a virus attacking its host organism. The
weak cells are killed off and the virus multiplies, spreads, destroying
anything that fails to compete. In Japan chain restaurants are seen as a good
thing. It is the reputation of the brand that makes people go to these
franchises, as all locations serve the same menu and provide the same level of
quality of the originating shop. Just as McDonalds has a standard level of
quality across all of its stores, so do the chain ramen restaurants in
Japan. The difference being McDonalds base standard of ‘we generally
attempt to not make you sick on purpose’ versus the Japan standard of ‘we will
kill our families if your noodle is less than perfect.’ There
are still the standard one-off restaurants that serve amazing ramen as well –
in my forced analogy these are cells that have built up antibodies and are
resistant to the virus, but the fact is you can walk down any street, see a
particular franchise and know exactly what you are going to get. So
the point is – there is good ramen everywhere in Japan. It
is so commonly good that it is taken for granted. Just
knowing this makes me want to cry for Melbourne.
The main
problem in Melbourne is the stock. There are several different types of
ramen stock and different combinations of these are used to create different
menu items. Shoyu is the soy based broth. There are broths with Miso
added. There are fish stocks used as well. Then
there is Tonkotsu ramen which uses a thick pork broth made from boiling masses
of pork bones for hours and hours. There are additions of some rendered
chicken fat or butter when the stock is added to the bowl. You
can mix and combine different broths to make different dishes.
Tonkotsu
broth is labour and time intensive, taking 6-8 hours of preparation. It
smells a bit while you’re making it (although not in the end product). It is
also the greatest noodle soup stock in the world. This
thick collagen laden pork soup has such a deep well of flavour it is hard to
describe. Different restaurants have their own small variation to the recipe and
the addition of a small amount of fish stock or chicken fat or soy or butter
changes the flavour yet again. The thick soup coats the noodles,
flavouring them as you pull them towards your slack, drooling jaw. The
complex nature of the stock transforms the dish in front of you from just a
noodle soup into something else. Ramen.
In
Melbourne you get Shoyu mostly. Sometimes there will be a miso ramen
on the menu. Tonkotsu broth in Melbourne is hard to find and generally disappointing. I
order ramen in Melbourne and I dream of what it could be like. People
generally hate me.
The first
time we went to Sydney überjoi had done her research and had read about a
non-descript food court formed from a ramshackle collection of restaurants
serving different asian cuisines. Sounds awesome, right? What she had
actually heard about was a ramen shop. There is a food court ramen shop
where the dude trained in Japan. He makes tonkotsu broth daily. Actually
twice a day. They have limited servings of a pork rib ramen. They
have a menu of over 15 different combinations of soup and toppings. Just
writing this is making me angry/hungry. Gumshara Ramen
is the definition of non-descript with hand written signs and fading pictures
of their dishes. But the first time we were up there I couldn’t help but notice
that there were a few people hanging around, waiting for 11am and for them to
start taking orders. I also couldn’t help noticing that the majority of these people were
people talking to each other in Japanese.
The first
time we ate there I instantly knew that I could never again side with Melbourne
in the eternal Sydney vs. Melbourne debate. They had
won. The egg was soft, the noodle was firm, chewy, exactly what you wanted it
to be. The tonkotsu stock was just amazing. This was
all I ever wanted my ramen to be.
So it
became a reason to go to Sydney. We would formulate excuses, reasons
we needed to go there.
“Demetri
Martin is playing at the Opera House!”
“Isn’t he
also playing Melbourne?”
“Yes, but
Ramen.”
“Jetstar
is having a sale!”
“We could
go eat Ramen!”
And then
most recently:
“It’s your
birthday! Surprise, we’re having Ramen!”
überjoi,
in her continuing research of places to eat when we make up excuses to go to
Sydney, had discovered a new Ramen joint. So we went
to Sydney and had ramen twice in two days.
Ryo’s Noodles
is the new addition to the Sydney Google search and so it was first on the
list. We get to Sydney and it is pouring with rain. We
check into our hotel and ask the receptionist where the best way to get to
North Shore. “What for?” she asks. We tell her we’re going there for
lunch. “You’re travelling all the way there for lunch?” is her response. I
swallow my immediate reply of “We’re wasting precious ramen time bitch just
tell us where the station is”, and let her spit out the directions to the
station.
We take
the train to the closest station, pull out our umbrellas and push on through
the rain. Ryo’s Noodles website claims that they’re open until 4pm, however we got
there at 2:30 and were the last people seated. They
were full when we arrived and turned away a few people behind us. We
immediately decide to order too much food. This is
the right decision.
 |
| Ryo's Noodles. |
 |
| Our selection. For some reason, I didn't take a photo of the karaage (fried chicken) :( It was delicious. |
 |
| Gyoza. |
 |
| Tonkotsu ramen in salt flavoured soup with roast pork, shallots and sesame seeds. |
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| Chicken ramen in Tokyo style soy sauce soup with roast pork, egg, bamboo shoots and nori. |
The food
was as good as it looks. Tonkotsu broth here was much thinner than what Gumshara produce but it
was really flavoursome. I know that part of my enjoyment was being extremely hungry and wet but
the food was good. Gyoza and karaage were tasty also. What
struck me was how many additional menu items were written on the walls. There
would be a lot to try here and some specialty items that would take a few
visits to find.
In all Ryo’s
noodles was excellent food and excellent value but I know that this was
impacted by my hunger at the time and having walked through the rain for 30
minutes to get there. I would happily spend a week gaining weight getting to know their
full menu.
That evening we went to Tetsuya’s, which will be relayed in another post. The next day we had ramen number 2: Gumshara.
After
being quite pleasantly surprised at Ryo’s the day before I wasn’t sure what to
expect at Gumshara. It had been quite a while since we had been here and I was no longer
sure what was real and what was imagined in terms of how good their soup
was. I tried something new this time – the Tonkotsu and fish broth noodle
soup. Usually I go straight for the special pork rib because they only make a
limited number each day and... well why not. In
the interest of science I moved on to another item from their menu.
 |
| Gumshara Ramen. |
 |
| Thick tonkotsu fish flavour noodle. |
 |
| Thick tonkotsu fish flavour noodle. |
 |
| Tonkotsu noodle. |
 |
| Tonkotsu noodle. |
 |
| Grilled home made BBQ pork skewer. |
Sitting
down to two different bowls in two days makes it so abundantly clear what a
huge range of variance there can be between good and great. Ryo’s
was good. Really good. Gumshara is really something else. In a way
I’m glad I don’t live in Sydney because living that close to Gumshara would be
a problem for me. I am obsessed with looking for mushrooms but my respite from that is
that there are only certain times of the year that mushrooms are around. If
I was able to visit Gumshara every day, I probably would. At
least a few times a week. No doubt there are people who already do this. My
birthday celebrations would be held annually in a dingy food court. I
would make decisions about the location of my home and place of work based on
ease of access to this pork soup dispensary. It would take over a section of my brain that may be needed for more important things like operating heavy
machinery or knowing when it’s socially required to emit a false laugh or
remembering the names of all the Masterchef contestants.
So – there
is good ramen and great ramen in Sydney. They are
both worth trying and both make me happy. Eating at
these places will ruin you for other ramen but hey, then you can become a ramen
snob. Then you can be a dick like me.
- words by pisso | images by überjoi.
Ryo's Noodles
Meal style: Lunch (5 dishes)
Cost: $41.00 (between 2 people)
Time and date of visit: 1:45pm Saturday 2 June 2012
Gumshara Ramen
Meal style: Lunch (3 dishes)
Cost: $28.00 (between 2 people)
Time and date of visit: 11:30am Sunday 3 June 2012
