So I happen to have a job that involves food and working with restaurant people. A week ago, I was lucky enough to get sent up to Sacramento for a little business trip. One of my stops: Shoki Ramen in downtown Sacramento.
Shoki is a pretty unique ramen place in the tonkotsu landscape of Northern California. Yasushi Ueyama's focus is on HEALTHY ramen that uses organic and local products. I wasn't sure if he was kidding when he told me this. How are you gonna make a food whose worth is dependent upon salt and fat content into something a health-conscious person would eat? Apparently, he's found several ways to do this.
While most ramen places here use a Tonkotsu* base, Shoki is making their ramen using Wafuu Dashi* as their base. The result is a much lighter ramen with a lower fat content, yet with enough umami bang to hold its own against the big fat pork ramen bullies. Ueyama-san uses this base in all his ramens (except his vegetarian ramen) and if you order it without the meat toppings, it's one of the very few pescatarian ramens available in the area.
While the Wafuu Dashi cuts down the calories in the soup, Shoki offers a substitute for the usual ramen noodles: Shirataki noodles. While the shirataki can't replicate the typical springiness of ramen noodles, it still holds the soup well and the neutral flavor works.
With the calories in the soup and noodles taken care of, the toppings don't need much work. Ueyama-san already uses pork shoulder for the chashu, avoiding the fatty pork belly that's become popular lately. And there's no pork back fat either, so the soup stays light.
So after about an hour of talking about this and that, he goes..."So you guys wanna eat or what?" And hell yes, my co-worker and I obliged.
I went with the almost-vegetarian Soy Milk Ramen with the Shirataki Noodles, just because I figured I can't find this combination anywhere else. A gluten free ajitsuke tamago was added on to the regular toppings.
It was the first time I'd tried a soy milk broth, and you know what?...I liked it a lot. Considering how close the soup was to being vegetarian, it was surprisingly good. I honestly was expecting a light watered down soup, but it was surprisingly thick and savory. Lots of umami going on in there from the bonito in the wafuu dashi. The shirataki was...well, it was shirataki. Plain tasteless noodles by themselves. But it held the soup relatively well.
The thing that tripped me out about the soup though, was that there were these little white unknown globules in the soup that looked and tasted like pork backfat. First thought: "Dude, what happened to it being close to vegetarian!?" BUT it turned out to be coagulated tofu from the soy milk. I guess when they make the soup, there are several reactions that turn the soy milk into tiny bits of tofu, and the texture is backfat-like. I don't know if this was intended or not, but I thought it was genius. It pretty much adds that backfat element without the calories.
After we were done, Ueyama-san asked us if we wanted another bowl. "We've started to estimate calories in our bowls, and your soymilk ramen with shirataki was probably under 200 calories, including the toppings." Jaw-drop. I dare anybody to find me a regular sized bowl of ramen for under 200 calories. How. The. Frack.
So in short, if you are health conscious, in the Sacramento area, and are craving a good bowl of ramen, I'd recommend Shoki. The end.
*Some definitions:
Tonkotsu Ramen 豚骨ラーメン - ramen with a soup made from pork bones. Japanese word for pork bones = tonkotsu 豚骨. It's the most prevalent type of ramen found in the US, and pretty much the soup that is responsible for this "ramen boom" we are currently experiencing. It's usually a very rich soup compared to other flavors, with many shops choosing to stir in chopped up pork back fat to add more of that fatty goodness.
(sidenote: Tonkatsu 豚カツ - pork cutlet, breaded and deep-fried. TonkAtsu. NOT the same as TonkOtsu. Yes, certain restaurants have phrases like "tonkatsu base" when describing soups on their menus, but those are simply misspellings. I'm looking at you, Genki Ramen. )
Wafuu Dashi 和風だし - soup stock made from fish and/or seaweed. Literally translated: Japanese-style soup stock.
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