Noodles topped with a towering flame: Sneak peek at Menbaka Fire Ramen
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Noodles topped with a towering flame: Sneak peek at Menbaka Fire Ramen
The Kyoto ramen shop famous for setting its ramen ablaze is now in Singapore. We got a face full of flames and lived to tell the tale.
This ramen is lit. (Photo: Joyee Koo)
21 Nov 2022 05:52AM (Updated: 09 Jul 2022 eleven:09PM)
How much do I love my eyebrows? I asked myself, as I saturday downwardly at the make new Menbaka Fire Ramen counter. I mean, did I actually need them? Eyebrows are pretty much just decorative, aren't they?
If you've been to the original Menbaka in Kyoto or seen pictures or videos of the famous dish, in which your basin of ramen is anointed with flaming green onion oil and a towering column of fire blazes up in front of your face up, the same last-minute thought might pop into your head.
By this time, even so, information technology's too late to back out, as the chef will take given you lot a very specific gear up of instructions including, "Don't leave your seat", "Don't scream" and "Don't run away".
Of course, if you're hither in the showtime place, you're clearly a thrill-seeker. Or a pyromaniac.
Menbaka'southward founder, ramen master Masamichi Miyazawa, is neither of those. He just actually, really loves green onions.
When he conceptualised the dish 36 years ago, he wasn't looking for theatrics or even a fire element, he told me. He merely wanted to find the best way to bring out the flavour of Kyoto's famous "kujo negi" green onions.
Adding flaming negi oil to the green onion-topped ramen gives the already-flavourful broth an intense smokiness that makes the vegetable sense of taste fifty-fifty sweeter and fresher.
It took him half a year to perfect the dish, and in the procedure, he singed off his hair and collected burn down marks all over his arms, he said with a laugh.
Eating the ramen, though, actually comes with an extremely low element of danger, even if the fire looks dramatic, he said.
In the 36 years that Menbaka has been operating in Kyoto, there hasn't been a single mishap. In fact, "The most dangerous thing that could happen is diners falling off their chairs in surprise," he quipped.
Here in the Singapore restaurant, the first outside of Kyoto, all-encompassing safety measures are in place. There's a country-of-the-art exhaust that whisks the flames abroad later on a couple of seconds. The counter is wide then that diners are at least i metre away from the fire. And the apply of phones for recording purposes isn't allowed at the counter, just in case people reach too close to the fire in their eagerness to capture the perfect shot.
Of class, the staff know that y'all came here to get that video, so they're happy to go footage for you – there's a row of selfie sticks behind the counter, where they'll position your telephone.
It was Principal Miyazawa's son, Shin Miyazawa, who came upwardly with this idea. Formerly working in luxury real manor in Tokyo, he entered his father's business and moved the eating place into the social media age.
His dad wasn't quite taken with the idea at first, Shin said, and so he seized his run a risk when his father was in the hospital for a small procedure, and installed the selfie sticks. That was when tourists began to propel the ramen-ya to international fame.
The begetter-and-son duo managed to travel to Singapore for the launch of their showtime overseas outlet.
And then, what's the burn down ramen experience actually like?
First, they set the phase with some jaunty music. Then, Master Miyazawa poured a small amount of flaming negi oil into my basin, setting it alight. A bright, roaring feather immediately blazed to life. It was hot – my eyes teared upward a little – and, for that cursory moment in fourth dimension, hypnotically mesmerising.
When the flame died downwards, I snapped back into my body as all the staff members applauded, endmost the curtains on that little chip of theatre.
Were they applauding the chef's prowess or my bravery? I'd like to think it was both.
So, I'll never get to tell my grandkids how I lost my eyebrows in the great boxing of Burn down Ramen – only I did become to slurp upwardly a hot, dirty, smoky bowl of ramen and an intense green onion experience like no other.
Menbaka opens on November 24 at 3.40pm at Cineleisure Orchard #05-03.
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/dining/sneak-peek-menbaka-fire-ramen-singapore-restaurant-250221
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