My First Time at Shakuma Ramen: The Curious Black-Oil Tonkotsu of Mount Aso, Looks Special but Tastes…
Meow meow everyone, welcome back! Today I’m taking you all to try a ramen shop with a pretty long history – Shakuma Ramen (尺間らーめん), or let’s just call it Shakuma Ramen for now. It first opened back in 1987, which makes it 36 years old as of today. Around midday we slowly cruised our way down the mountain, and by the time we finally got here Google Maps was already showing the shop would close in 10 minutes. But I refused to give up and pushed the door open anyway, all because I’d seen online that this place sells horse meat ramen and I was dead set on trying it.
But before we get started, let me drop the shop info first.
Shakuma Ramen location info
Type: Ramen shop
Suggested time to spend: 30 minutes ~ 1 hour
Restroom: Yes
Free Wi-Fi: No
Detailed location info: https://maps.app.goo.gl/QfAJHuiR5KXDWhGd8
Shakuma Ramen’s menu: https://mydondon.net/food041/
Shakuma Ramen – agonizing over whether to order the horse meat ramen
Thankfully the shop was willing to let us have a bowl of ramen. The thing is, this place opens at slightly different times every week, and the hours for each week are written on a little whiteboard out front. The daily opening hours and which items have sold out also get updated on their Instagram.
You can check out the shop’s Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/shakuma.ramen.aso/?hl=ja
So in the end… I didn’t order the horse meat ramen. Why not? Because while I was going through the menu, the top line kept getting translated as “horse meat soup.” And even though the ramen photo below seemed to say horse meat soy sauce ramen, I was really scared of ordering the wrong thing – terrified that what would show up was a barely-seasoned clear broth with a single horse leg sitting in it. If I’d seen that, I think I would’ve ascended to heaven on the spot.
(The top says it’s a broth simmered with horse bone and cilantro, and below it says soy sauce ramen – and that white thing in the photo, could that be the horse meat?)
Shakuma Ramen – 黒マー油系豚骨ラーメン (black mayu tonkotsu ramen)
Let me also say a bit about the atmosphere. The place isn’t exactly the most comfortable – the tables were wiped down reasonably clean, but for some reason the menu was sticky, which kept making me want to go wash my hands while flipping through it. That’s a little something they could improve on. That said, they’ve got a ton of seating: not just the usual face-to-face 4-to-6-person tables, but also counter seats and tatami seating to choose from.
Anyway, in the end I ordered another dish on the menu, the “黒マー油系豚骨ラーメン.” Tossing it into a translator gives you something like “black mara-yu tonkotsu ramen”? I had absolutely no idea what that meant! Luckily there was an explanation below saying it’s a Kumamoto-style ramen simmered with black fish oil, so going on gut instinct I figured it must be a black-oil tonkotsu ramen. If any of you Mai-Mais out there know what it actually is, feel free to let me know in the comments!
(A menu I still couldn’t understand even after translating it)
Anyway, anyway – whether it’s insect ramen or ramen made from whatever weird ingredients, the only thing that really matters is that the ramen itself is tasty, right? So how was this bowl?
For this bowl I added an extra 4 slices of char siu, so there were 6 slices in total – though maybe because that was a bit much, a few of them ended up stacked on top of each other or buried underneath. Aside from that, there were actually more toppings than I expected! Besides the char siu, there was scallion, bean sprouts, shredded wood ear mushroom, and a soft-boiled egg. Let me talk about the broth first. The broth is actually a tonkotsu base with black oil added on top, not the kind that’s pitch-black all over like Taiwan’s Nagi (凪).
As for the flavor, the black oil on top has a sesame aroma to it – maybe the black color comes from using sesame – and the whole bowl of soup has a really distinctive flavor thanks to how the black oil and the broth smooth each other out. But probably because this black oil is heavily seasoned, the whole bowl ends up tasting a bit saltier than the other bowls I ordered.
Not only that, it’s purely a salty-flavored ramen – the saltiness almost completely buries the original tonkotsu flavor. Maybe I just don’t like this kind of thing to begin with. I’m not saying it’s bad, it just gets a little cloying – and of course this is purely my subjective take. As for the toppings, I have to say this shop is super bold and unconstrained. Why do I say that? Because most of the toppings are just the pure, honest flavor of the ingredients themselves – scallion is just scallion, egg is just egg. Should the scallion be cut lengthwise? Nope, who’s here to compare knife skills with you!
(The shop seems to bill itself as the strongest ramen in Aso)
It’s just that bold and that carefree – eating this bowl, I could almost hear the owner telling you, “I ain’t messing around with that fancy little stuff! My noodles and my broth are what matter most!” And yet, oddly enough, it doesn’t come across as careless – more like the focus is on the parts you’d find delicious. After all, adding those ingredients changes the flavor at least a little, while how they’re cut doesn’t really affect the whole thing. I even started to wonder whether the egg in this bowl was actually just a hard-boiled egg, because I didn’t taste any of that marinade flavor you’d expect from a soft-boiled one.
If you find it too plain, you can choose to add some of the condiments on the table to give it more depth. I really recommend the cup on the table that looks like fried garlic bits – it looks like something homemade. It has a slight garlicky taste but doesn’t steal the spotlight from the original broth.
(The bottles and jars on the table – the one in the bottom-left corner is the fried garlic bits I mentioned above)
There’s also pink pickled ginger and chili oil, and so on – adding them to the soup really does make it a bit more interesting. I also ordered the extra-rich tonkotsu ramen…
But… it wasn’t all that tasty :>
Okay, let’s wrap things up! I tried a peculiar bowl of ramen called “黒マー油系豚骨ラーメン,” which after translation seems to be black-oil tonkotsu ramen. The broth is rich with a sesame aroma, though a touch too salty. That said, the toppings are super generous, including char siu, scallion, bean sprouts, shredded wood ear, and a soft-boiled egg. The shop’s environment isn’t especially comfortable, but there’s plenty of seating to choose from, from traditional seats all the way to tatami seating. What sets this shop apart is its no-frills attitude, focusing on the natural flavor of the ingredients without fussing over knife work. On top of that, the table is stocked with all kinds of condiments – I recommend trying the one that looks like fried garlic bits. As unusual as it all is, what matters most is the flavor of the ramen, and as long as the flavor’s good, that’s enough. All in all, this ramen adventure was full of surprises – between the confusing menu and the unique broth, it was an experience worth trying.
Another 27 ramen articles:
https://mydondon.net/category/ramen
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