By Ya Ramen & Sake Bar

6 February 2019

BU YA RAMEN & SAKE BAR

64 Kloof Street, Cape Town

The Japanese  "ramen western"  Tampopo (1985) is a fond memory from the days when the Labia Theatre was a proper art house cinema, showing three movies a night and concentrating on the obscure and the cultish.

For me the most memorable scene from Tampopo is the one where a patron explains and demonstrates the etiquette of eating a bowl of ramen, which is a zen exercise of studying the precise placement of the elements in the bowl, putting  the  slices of pork to one side for eating last, and then carefully and slowly, mouthful by discreet mouthful,  ruminatively chew the solids as if each bite comprises of the most exotic of textures and flavours. Once you’ve lovingly eaten the pork, you raise the bowl to your mouth and drain the contents.

I’m new to the ramen scene, such as it is, in Cape Town and have not been to Downtown Ramen in Harrington Street, and only to a few of the new wave of Japanese eateries in town. Bu Ya  has been around for a good few months now, having taken over the space previously occupied by The Slug & Lettuce, which folded shortly after major renovations. It might be that Bu Ya has taken over the dark wood tables, bar and other décor from the its predecessor and tarted up the interior with Japanese paper lantern type light fittings and other bits and bobs of Japanese influence in the decoration. It’s not exactly luxurious inside, in fact it resembles just a made over burger joint, but it’s okay, except that some of the upholstered benches of the banquette seating against the one side wall are torn and frayed.

At lunch time I was the only patron. Perhaps the crowds drop by at night.

The menu offers spring rolls, dim sum, won ton and bao buns, plus the noodle (ramen, Udon or rice noodles) dishes, rice wraps, poke bowls and tao rice burgers. On the ramen front there are chicken and vegetable shio, miso beef and the chashu shoyu (R115), which I tried.

Feeling daring on a Wednesday afternoon, I  had a rather expensive Windhoek Lager at R27,00. On the other hand, one can order 2 litres of Tsingtao beer for R60,00. No, I lie, it’s probably a standard size bottle. I wasn’t daring enough to order sake.

This chashu shoyu looks very similar to the dish I recall from Tampopo. My bowl was big, and though I’d specified ramen, I think I might have received Udon noodles (the noodles were thicker than what I think of as ramen), but I’m no expert on Japanese noodle types. There’s spinach, bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, Nori, scallions, half a marinated egg and two good-sized slices of tender, tasty pork belly, in a flavourful soy broth. Oh, and a sliver of carrot.

I disdainfully waived away the fork I was offered to eat my dish, and used the chopsticks, doing my best to emulate the expert chopstick users in the movie and showing the dish the utmost of respect, and drained the bowl by lifting it to my face. There was no one to judge me.

As a first time ramen experiencer, I quite enjoyed the chashu shoyu. It was filling, had a good broth, and you can’t beat a dish with pork belly.

So, ramen.  Hipper than sushi right now?   I might return to Bu Ya because it’s down the road from my office and I would want to try more of the dishes, but I’d say that sushi is still my favourite Japanese food type and Bu Ya isn’t compellingly funky enough to make me go ramen crazy.