{ Orenchi Ramen | San Jose, CA }
Old H&M Shirt (similar) | Zara Jeans (similar) | Sorel Boots | Botkier Bag
I would not consider myself an especially patient person. Rush hour traffic, for example? No amount of zen classical music can calm The Rage. There was one time when I had a 10:00AM meeting in San Francisco and left my house at 7:15AM – thinking that nearly three hours should be sufficient for what amounts to an hour-long drive, even in rush hour – and after sitting completely still on I-85 for a solid forty minutes I was about to just park my car on the highway and start walking, because I could not handle the absence of movement for one more second.
Some things, however – like a meal at a restaurant so storied that there is a crowd of people 40 deep outside an hour before the place even opens – are worth waiting for.
San Jose restaurants aren’t something I know a ton about…and since I don’t know many people here, I also don’t know who to ask where to go. So the past few weeks I’ve started googling around to find the best little hole-in-the-wall finds – because that’s more my speed than anything with Michelin stars and such – and so far? We’ve had pretty grand success. A couple of weeks ago, there was this Vietnamese meal, and now? RAMEN.
I have a major soft spot for ramen – and especially ramen-for-brunch. On weekend mornings (pre-babies), Kendrick and I used to journey all the way over to midtown West just to eat bowls of Shoyu at Men Kui Tei. When I did a search to find the best ramen in San Jose, Orenchi Ramen was the place that came up over and over again, but virtually every review warned about the line. “It’s intense,” they said.
Um…yes. That’s an understatement. We got there at 11:44 in the morning – that would be fourteen minutes after the door opened – and there were already two pages full of names on the waiting list. Fortunately, there was also a full wall of those coin-operated crappy toy-dispenser-things ready and waiting to take all of my quarters in a valiant effort to keep my children occupied for the hour and twenty minutes it took for us to get seated. (It actually wasn’t that bad; it was a nice day – shocker – so we just hung out outside, drank coffee, talked to the other people waiting on line about what to order and played with the kids.)
The restaurant is located in a nondescript strip mall, but the exterior (which you can see in these photos) is pretty cool; kind of minimalist and chic. Inside is similarly bare-bones; the primary decor element is a wall of polaroids taken of happy diners. What we ordered, based on the recommendations of the regulars we chatted with while waiting:
- Shoyu (soy sauce-base) Ramen with an extra egg (oh my god the egg; soft-boiled and oozy and incredible), size large;
- Ore No Tsukemen, a kind of deconstructed ramen that arrives with a bowl of super-rich broth into which you dip the noodles and other ingredients;
- Fried chicken, which you smear with garlic paste from the bowls set out on every table (everyone insisted this was amazing; they were right. It’s a must-order).
All really good, but for me the revelation was the Tsukemen (pictured above, partially obscured by my son’s hand because we could not keep him away from it); the restaurant only makes 15 servings of it for each meal (I asked, and apparently this is because one of the ingredients is imported from Japan and hard to come by…?), so we were super excited to even get the chance to order it. It didn’t look especially interesting – just a bowl of broth and a plate of noodles and bamboo shoots and stuff, but the broth. THE BROTH. It was so rich that it completely coated the noodles – but so delicious that I would have happily just gone ahead and drunk it straight. Seriously one of the single most incredible dishes I’ve ever had in my life.
Right now it’s 9:55AM on a Monday morning, and I am seriously considering going back for lunch (by which I mean arriving an hour before the place opens, putting my name in, and plopping myself down in the car with an iPad while I wait, because not doing that hour-and-twenty-minute thing again if I don’t have to, thanks).
A+
