Matsudai Ramen, 183-185 Clare Road, Cardiff CF11 6QS. Small plates £4-£8, ramen £12.50-£15, dessert £7, cocktails from £8.25, beers from £4.75
In the beginning was a logo: two concentric rings to represent a bowl, with two lines representing chopsticks bisecting them, their tips touching in the centre. Around the edge are the words Matsudai Ramen, which roughly means “Ramen Forever”. James Chant, a one-time musician, tour manager for noughties indie bands you won’t recall and organiser of music festivals, had turned 40 and needed a new direction. He was, he told me after dinner, “tired of facilitating the creativity of others rather than being creative”.
The design course that resulted in that logo was a response to that need to scratch a creative itch. Underlying it was a new interest in ramen, the virtuous interplay of broth, noodles and toppings. Chant admits that, while he had toured Japan with bands back in the day, he never ate a bowl of ramen there. He didn’t try one until he visited a Japanese restaurant in Cheltenham a couple of years ago. “I now know that what I ate was pretty poor,” he says, “but it blew my mind.”
Chant is a self-confessed geek. Like all good geeks he was looking hungrily for a rabbit hole to disappear down. Ramen proved ideal. It has a frame of key components. There’s the broth and the noodles, and toppings like the chashu pork belly and the ajitama eggs, all of which can be sweated over in pursuit of the ideal. However, there are also endless variations. It allows for, indeed demands, innovation. And while it is rooted in Japanese traditions, it has developed as much outside Japan. Chant identifies himself as a 40-something white bloke from Cardiff. You can wrinkle your nose at the notion of him getting armpit-deep in such a profoundly Japanese dish, but he sits in a noble tradition of non-Japanese chefs honouring the essentials.
He first broke through with a series of pop-ups in Cardiff in 2019, tickets for which sold out with increasing speed. Then Covid happened and Chant started making kits for ramen at home. I ordered one during one of the longer lockdowns and it was a joyous burst of sunshine at our table amid the darkness. The tonkotsu broths, made by boiling pork bones for a dozen hours or more until the stock takes on a white, creamy, lip-smacking, gelatine-rich vigour, had profound depth. The noodles had necessary bite. The eggs had perfectly jellied yolks; remarkable when served in a restaurant, a small miracle when delivered halfway across the country.
The ramen kit business continues and I heartily recommend it. But finally last summer, Chant achieved his goal of opening the only dedicated ramen shop in Wales. It’s in Cardiff’s Grangetown and occupies a broad, brightly lit space, dominated by communal tables and happily spared the cringing addition of faux geisha lanterns or splatters of badly executed anime. There is a tight open kitchen and blackboards offering T-shirts for sale, alongside ramen kits and a few specials, including cocktails. Start perhaps with a shiroguroni, a witty, refreshing bitter lemon twist on the negroni, made with gin, sake and the fragrant citrus of yuzu.
Move on to the small plates. Crescents of skin-on, deseeded cucumber sunomono come in a sweet-savoury sesame dressing with just the right hit of chilli. Bouncy slabs of shiitake mushroom are sweetly, deeply pickled and make quick friends with the strands of pink pickled ginger with which they are topped. Then there is the impeccable karaage, which arrives in generous platefuls of golden-brown crispy things for £8, with that addictive mouth-coating richness that a cornflour-based batter gives. The triple-fried pieces of marinated chicken thigh are as good as any I’ve tried anywhere.
The huge pile of similarly treated shredded oyster mushroom with a vegan curry mayonnaise is even better. It’s a thrillingly vegan take on crispy squid and disappears quicker than the chicken. There are only four types of ramen to choose from tonight, all priced in the low teens. The meaty ones very much live up to my memories of those eaten at home. Only they are so much more beautiful, so much more organised, having been plated by the man who knows what he is doing. The signature tonkotsu has an almost Dulux gloss to it, speckled with jewels of molten fat. There are generous slices of pork belly, crisped at their edges, with their honour guard of shredded spring onions and wood ear mushrooms. The sunset red version, given its coy, crimson blush courtesy of rayu chilli oil, is even prettier. It has the kind of heat that almost makes you wish you had a sore throat that it could soothe.
But the revelation is the vegan version of the tonkotsu that, given its analogue’s origins in the boiling of bones, sounds like a contradiction in terms. Here, though, is the richest of savoury broths, given its creamy, slightly sweet edge by the addition of oat “milk”. It’s topped with paving slabs of tofu that have first been marinated then deep fried to give a crisp shell. It’s a big old bowl of deep care and thoughtfulness.
At the moment, ingredients are sourced from Japan, via a friend in Tokyo. There’s kombu from Hokkaido, for example, and dried sardines from the Setouchi region. Chant says he is now actively looking for British and ideally Welsh versions of all these things and more. Locally caught sea bream will be used for the dashi stock from the spring, and he’s working on gyoza with a Caerphilly crust. It is logical that laverbread, close cousin to all the edible Japanese seaweeds, eventually makes a showing. As to the noodles, these are made for him to his own recipe by a craft manufacturer in Manchester, though he has invested in a machine. He will be experimenting with making his own. It’s what geeks do.
Service is enthusiastic and informed; they know where the dishes come from. Dessert is rarely a high point in noodle shops and that’s the case here. A Japanese soufflé cheesecake doesn’t really deliver on the promise of any of those words, but it’s a tiny thing. As we leave, I note that, across Clare Road, is a garish bar called Legends. Beneath that it says “the place to be”. In truth those words far better describe Matsudai Ramen.
News bites
While the Disaster Emergencies Committee continues its fundraising work for victims of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, the UK’s food world is also getting involved. The Turkish chef Esra Muslu of Zahter, just off London’s Carnaby Street, is collecting essentials like blankets and clothing, which will be sent direct to the relief effort on the ground. She is keeping the restaurant open today and next Sunday to receive donations and will also be adding £1 to every bill, which will go to NGO charities. For more information visit @zahterlondon on Instagram.
Meanwhile, food writers Melek Erdal and Melissa Thompson are raising funds through a good old-fashioned bake sale at Holloway Model Bakery in north London, next Sunday between noon and 4pm. They have also organised an online raffle with lots from a whole range of hospitality businesses including Honey & Co, Jikoni and Toad Bakery. Anyone wishing to donate a prize should email earthquakereliefbakeraffle@gmail.com. For information on the raffle go here: raffall.com/turkeysyriaearthquakerelief.
And proof that the hospitality sector can be a very efficient source of fundraising like this: the homelessness charity StreetSmart, which every year in the run-up to Christmas gets restaurants to add £1 to every bill to help tackle the issue, has announced that this year’s campaign raised £750,000, which is £50,000 more than last year. £97,000 of that came from the restaurants inside Selfridge’s. Burnt Orange in Brighton raised £6,000, and £2,000 came from Celetano’s in Glasgow. More than 50 UK homelessness charities now receive money from the initiative. At streetsmart.org.uk.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
