Daikokuya

July 20, 2007

After reading about Daikokuya on food blogs, hearing about it from friends, and even getting a Daikokuya coupon for my birthday, I decided that it was time to break with my low-carb principles… at least for one night.

So with seven other curious people, I went to Daikokuya at 9 pm, greeted by that famous yellow awning and about 20 other people with the same idea as us waiting hungrily outside. We waited for nearly an hour before we were seated. And we should have known that tiny ramen shop couldn’t seat eight people: we had to split up into two groups of four.

By the time we were seated, we were ready to eat anything. We started with two orders of gyoza.



These were handmade, filled with pork and green onions, slightly charred, and topped off with even more(!) green onions. The green onions on top were excessive, but they created a beautiful presentation and emphasized the onion flavor that dominated the stuffing. A light, tangy gyoza sauce accompanied the dish. It was a delicious appetizer.

Our ramen arrived a few minutes later:



The broth was the first thing I tried, and it was, in my opinion, the star of the dish. I can’t emphasize enough how wonderful it is that Daikokuya makes their broth by boiling pork bones for a full day! How many restaurants, let alone ramen shops, take the time and the love to do this? This is the traditional way humans have made broth for ages, and as both an anthropologist and a nutritionist, I highly approve of this mode of cooking.

So I inhaled that warm, milky, calcium-rich broth, forgetting about… the noodles!

Ok, my disregard for refined carbohydrates aside, I still was not impressed with the noodles at Daikokuya. They seemed just a step above pre-made packaged noodles.

Accompanying the noodles and broth were a few large pork strips, (Mmmmm, these were so rich and fatty! They literally melted in my mouth!) a hardboiled egg (marinated overnight), a small sprinkling of bamboo and bean sprouts, and of course, the requisite heap of green onions over the top.

If you prefer, there is ginger and garlic on the table to spoon into your ramen. I tried both, and found the ginger to be fine, but the pureed garlic lent a strange taste to the dish which I didn’t enjoy.

When all was done, I had finished the broth and the accompaniments, but left half of the noodles uneaten. I sucked the marsh dry and left the fishes flopping around.


327 E First Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 626-1680