New and Noted: Menya Musashi

During the 17th century, Miyamoto Musashi revolutionized the Japanese samurai world with his double sword style and philosophic musings. Nearly 400 years later in 1996, a ramen shop opened in Tokyo, adopting the warrior’s name and his innovative style with bowls of rich tonkatsu broth and unorthodox thick noodles. Although the menu at the newly opened IAPM branch misleadingly states the Shanghai outlet is the first abroad, branches in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong have drawn queues for years. Each branch has a slightly different menu, tweaked to local tastes, but the basic ramen broth stays the same no matter the country.

Choose from three standard varieties (RMB 42-50): white (standard pork bone broth), red (chilli oil) and black (scallion onion oil). The white is marked by the funky scent of tonkatsu that boils up like the pork bones it’s made from. In the red corner, pork broth fortified with chilli oil is speckled with crimson dots; visual reminders of the fiery peppers conflagrated for the broth’s greater good. And the ebony scallion version smacks of deeply caramelised

green onions. Each version comes with addictive thick egg noodles that spring back as you bite down. The big choice here is what type of pork to accompany the sheets of seaweed, spinach leaves and soft-boiled egg already floating in each bowl. It’s hard to go wrong with any option – the thinly sliced pork offers more surface area to gnaw on, but the marbled pork belly more flavour. If you’re looking for the best of both worlds, try the slightly leaner cha siu; the broad cut limits its fat to one bite. They also offer tsukemen (RMB 50) here; your choice of broth served with noodles, egg, bamboo shoots and barbecue pork on the side for dipping. The menu comes with illustrated directions for the uninitiated (dip, sup, add soup) and the specialty toothsome noodles are designed to maintain elasticity in the soup that is scientifically-calibrated at 60 degrees Celsius. A bowl of ramen is a meal unto itself, but that doesn’t mean you should skip the sides here. Cold spinach marinated in roasted sesame dressing (RMB 15) is spiked with fiery wasabi, but it disappears fast, runny noses be damned. Chewy niangao (RMB 15) wrapped in thinly sliced beef is another

winner. Slightly cheaper than the alreadyaffordable Ippudo, it will be interesting to see which Japanese noodle joint reigns supreme just floors apart in IAPM. With five Ippudo stores now in Shanghai, Menya’s novelty factor gave it an edge for the first couple of weeks of operation. But it’s full-on food court dining, with little more than an open kitchen separating it from the Hainan chicken joint next door. Either way, Puxi is now spoilt for choice when it comes to ramen.

What: Samurai noodles from Tokyo

Where: 5/F, IAPM Mall, #509, 999 Huaihai Lu, near Xiangyang Lu. Tel: 6495 0207

Why: The latest contender for Shanghai’s best bowl of ramen