2.16.2005
nantsu-tei : jumping the queue
another wednesday in shinagawa. rain. damn, shoe was not liking how this day went. well, there is the ramen to look forward to... now, iff'n you've been scoring at home for the past few weeks, you know shoe's been tackling the shinatatsu, a whole whack of ramen shoppes, all sys-tematic like. working down the line, all business. but when shoe wandered in today, the usually loong line at nantsu, all short-like n all on account of the rain, he had to pounce. the end of the line, the build-up to the best of the best all for naught! well, as it turns out, nantsu is all about gratification delay.
shoe made it inside about 15 minutes (prolly less than half the usual time, thanx rain-gods!) after smanking in line, and the first thing to hit was the smell: roast beefy, garlick. yeahhhh... then the line for the ticket, shoe went for the chashew-men... mmmm.. lotsa towel-headed earnest young men rushing aboot, precision in the chaos. shoe plunked down, and was looking for a bowl right away, but no! still a wait. in the meantime shoe read the on-counter literature.
nantsu is one of those places that are fussy about how you experience the bowl, with a helpful guideline to make sure you get the most outta your ramen experience. inhale the aroma. sample the noodles. dunk the chashew deep into the works. take your first breathless sample of the soup. commence. now, shoe is a soup-first kinda guy, but inr epsect to places that are serious about their ramen, he decided to go for the noodles first.
the bowl came. inky smanky blackness in the broth, faintly staining the bowl. noodles hidden. chashew beckoning, the nori an afterthought. seeing this, and with the roast-beefy smell in mind, shoe thought of the haorai. well well! another black-heart ramen! shoe dug in, noodles, chashew, soup. man o man o man! bowl of the year! (so far..) the soup was like a mix of the haorai, as in the roasty-beefy sense, and yet had the qualities of the creamy goodness of long-departed
akadaigo. whoa. the noodles, straight n thin. the chashew, while not the best, certainly held its own.
after finishing off the bowl at nantsu, yer supposed to get up, put the bowl on the counter and exclaim UMAI-ZE BAYBEE!!! a colourful, yet helpful character is on hand to show you how..
now these guys know how to rawk a ramen joint..
knocking down the rest of the ramens in the shinagawa is going to seem all anti-cli-mactic-like, shoe reckons.. to steal a wee fark cliche...with nantsu,
(forgive the cheesy-mad paint skillzz)
link | spewed forth by s. at 8:51 PM
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