Kaisen Tomato Ramen at Gyoza Bar + Ramen in Vancouver January 8, 2014.John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail
There is a mystique that surrounds ramen. Many purists believe the steaming bowls of rich, meaty broth and springy noodles should be slurped only at austere counter tops in cramped food stalls where talking is frowned upon and perfume is verboten.
Gyoza Bar + Ramen is the exact opposite. It's a modern, spacious, hipster restaurant with wine on tap and chubby cooks wearing skinny jeans. The prices are relatively high because the kitchen uses fresh, local and largely organic ingredients and makes noodles from scratch. The signature dishes are fusion innovations: deep-fried gyoza stuffed with short rib; saffron-seafood ramen made with tomato broth.
The restaurant opened last fall and the long, narrow exposed-brick room is owned by Aburi Restaurants Canada, the company that introduced Vancouver to flamed sushi with rich sauces at sister restaurants Miku and Minami.
You could call Gyoza Bar a stylish gateway to the obsessive world of ramen mania. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Ramen may be a national obsession in Japan, but it's not immutable. It's not even ancient. The stretchy, alkaline noodles are a Chinese import that became popular in the 1950s.
While it is generally agreed that there are eight main regional styles, the basic recipe of broth, noodles and tare (liquid seasoning) is open to wide interpretation. There are artisanal versions (in Japan they call it kodawari) made with free-range meats and small-batch noodles.
In New York, ramen master Ivan Orkin (the first American to open a ramen shop in Tokyo) specializes in a Jewish-American soup mixed with smoked whitefish and rye noodles. David Chang built his Momofuku empire on ramen fortified with bacon and deglazed with sake. So, despite what the online detractors on Urban Spoon and Yelp have to say about Gyoza Bar (and boy, are there ever a lot of haters), no single ramen recipe is wholly authentic or traditional.
Even in Tampopo, the art-house film that turned the perfect bowl of ramen into a holy grail, the success of a soup comes down to the soul of the cook. And that's where Gyoza Bar fails. To paraphrase Led Zeppelin, this big-talking kitchen ain't got none.
Gyoza Bar doesn't even know what it wants to be. Is it Middle-Eastern-Japanese fusion? A lot of those influences are on the menu, including karaage (fried) chickpeas with wasabi peas, crispy harissa tofu gyoza and hummus with edamame relish. But then there are Brussels sprouts with wild boar bacon and Creole-spiced prawns. It feels like the chef threw every concept against the wall and is just waiting to see what sticks.
The signature teppan gyoza is very good. The house-made gyoza dough makes a thick skin with a soft chew. The dumplings are served in a cast-iron pan with a well-seared exterior on one side. The Fraser Valley pork stuffing is juicy and flecked with diced ginger.
But the miso short rib gyoza is very bad. First of all, it's deep-fried, which turns the dough into rubber. Then it's sprinkled with dry feta, giving the dish another texture of rubber. The braised beef is dry and tasteless. The jalapeno-soy glaze is a single-note burn. The dish is inexplicably finished with wilted cucumbers and shrivelled mushrooms.
The signature ramen is seafood in a tomato-saffron broth. Seafood? Yes, it's actually common in Japan, although not so popular in North America. And tomato broth happens to be a hot new ramen in Tokyo. The chain restaurant Taiyou specializes in tomato ramen topped with Parmesan. The seafood – big fat scallops, plump prawns, mussels and clams – are perfectly cooked. The vegetables, including kale and rapini, are crisp. The thick, straight noodles are decently firm for fresh. All in all, it's a lovely soup that tastes exactly like bouillabaisse. It will not satiate your craving for ramen.
The tamari-shoyu tonkotsu pork ramen is more troublesome. It tastes familiar, but it's a very poor version. The soup is served barely lukewarm. The tonkotsu, a boiled pork bone broth, is light and lean when it should be milky and fatty. The tamari soy seasoning is very earthy and not balanced with enough acidity. (Surprisingly, the restaurant doesn't serve any vinegar or chili condiments on the side, so diners can't adjust the soup to their tastes). The pork char siu is tender, but lean. The kitchen didn't offer a fatter belly option, as most ramen shops do.
All in all, it was a lacklustre bowl of ramen. It would be a shame if a customer came here for their first taste and mistakenly believed that this is as good as it gets. Gyoza Bar may be different, but the ramen here doesn't come close to the perfect bowl of noodle soup.