In the pursuit of my dream ramen, I visited acclaimed ramen shop, Aoi (蒼). Hearing from a few independent sources, many of my Belle II colleagues are quite familiar with this location so, on a nice and cloudy day (before it reaches 30ºC and the humidity kicks in...), I thought I had to visit. From what I could tell, this appears to be a seafood (mainly katsuo I think) pork bone broth topped with a fine katsuobushi powder, bean sprouts, lettuce covered with rayu, menma, and cha-shu. Compared to Katsuryu, which mainly uses niboshi, katsuo (or skipjack tuna) is much milder but still provides a nice backdrop to support and elevate the pork cha-shu and broth. The extra addition of the dried katsuo powder was fantastic since it helped bring out the katsuo in the broth a lot more in a localized region, providing a nice varying experience.
In terms of toppings, I think the lettuce with rayu (ラー油) provided a bit of lightness in the otherwise heavy bowl of ramen, which I quite enjoyed. The bean sprouts I think were a nice filler that helped pick up more of the broth, which I don't mind. The cha-shu was quite surprising. It was more"chopstick tender" than many other establishments I've been to in Tsukuba (but not yet fall apart). Maybe I shouldn't have gotten the cha-shu ramen since the extra cha-shu and the decadence of the broth was too sinful. I'm not so youthful anymore...
Finally, here are the noodles. I don't always have a noodle shot in these blogs so I wanted to make sure I got one for this blog. The noodles did a really good job at picking up the broth and loved the texture of the somewhat thicker noodle. This broth wasn't overly rich where a thicker noodle is required so I think the balance here was quite nice.
Finally, I also wanted to try their gyoza to compare. The texture from the pan fry at the bottom was superb and the seasoning of the filling was perfect, no additional shoyu was required. However, they did serve the gyoza with some yuku-kosho (a blend of peppers and a Japanese citrus called yuzu, which is a spicier/peppery version of a lemon). There were no atypical spices in the gyoza so the addition of a dab of yuzu-kosho on top kept things interesting throughout the meal.
I did try to put some of the yuzu-kosho on the cha-shu and found that the yuzu-kosho detracted from the flavors of the broth and cha-shu. I appreciate that the ramen was carefully crafted enough where the addition of something that was only meant for the gyoza didn't perfectly mesh. Respect.
I'm torn because this is closer to my typical ideal of ramen but they also have tsukemen and shrimp flavored ramen so I want to be cautious of my score. I still think the stamina ramen was a more enjoyable experience due to a more interesting journey across the entire meal so I want to say 8.7ish but I might have to return to this blog after trying more of Aoi's ramen. I guess I have quite a bit of homework to still do.
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