00:00 John Daub: Hello and welcome everybody! Greetings to Sakura Town in Saitama. This is gonna be a pretty delicious episode because we get a chance to eat a bowl of ramen—a really famous bowl of ramen. What they're doing here at Sakura Town and behind me is the Kadokawa Culture Museum. It's pretty cool inside. If you're interested in seeing what's inside, we had exclusive access last night, so check that link from last night and you can check out what we had in there, which is a design from Kengo Kuma and it just opened this year. In fact, the official grand opening was this month. So there's not a lot of people here yet, but I have a pretty strong feeling we're gonna have a ton of people.

00:51 John Daub: Over there is probably the coolest shrine. It has an LED gate. Do you see that? It's a lot better at night, but it's okay during the day. Tokorozawa is about 30 minutes from Tokyo and it's a pretty interesting place because it's famous for the LED manhole covers. This is where Ghibli's Miyazaki-san lives as well. And it also has Sakura Town, this new attraction. Last night, I stayed in an anime hotel—and I put air quotes because Kadokawa also is a video game maker, but also an anime maker. And the room theme was anime themed. It was pretty cool. I showed that in some of the Instagram stories, so you can take a look at the hotel room on Instagram.

01:38 John Daub: This here is the Walker. Walker is a publication that highlights all the best ramen in Japan. They have travel magazines and they also have an online site. This is mostly for Japanese tourists, but it's good for you to know if you're coming to visit Japan. You can pick one of these up at the bookstore and you'd have all the inside information on the most delicious ramen and the new shops around the country. And they have a shop here. And I love this concept. What they do is every single month or week—you can see here's the schedule for November and then for December. The schedule is listed also on the website and they're always changing the chef. They have different shops and different chefs featured at this shop. Today we're going to be having this ramen, and if you come on a different day, you might have a ramen that you've never tried before from a different area of the country. You can try that here. And it's kind of a neat concept that also gives you another reason to come to Sakura Town. I think that's a pretty neat way to do that because food is one reason to travel. I always say that.

02:50 John Daub: Eugene Holbrook's here. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. So Thanksgiving meal is going to be ramen. Let's go inside and have a bowl.

03:08 John Daub: The first thing you do when you come in here, well, in the era that we live in, we have to check our temperature. Thirty-six point one degrees. So I'm safe. This is the menu system here. So this ramen that's featured this month, this week, is shoyu ramen (soy sauce ramen). So we have here tickets. They're all the same, right? The size is different. This is 200 grams, 250 grams and 150 grams. Let's get the 150 gram one because it's interesting. It's the same price. And I wanted to try this one, which is a soy sauce egg on top of the rice.

04:03 John Daub: So, yeah, I guess we click here and then you got to add in some money. This is a new machine. I'm 10 yen short. Thank you. Yay. When you get the ticket, and this one is for the egg, you get to keep it. And here's the yoshisho (call button). So you get a receipt. So it's about $15 for this. Here's the shop. And once again, this shop is changing every couple of days. Again, the chef is going to be changing. And the chef will be here in the kitchen cooking the ramen for everybody. And we're going to get a chance to watch him cook because as you see, the shop is not open yet. And we have exclusive access, which is very interesting. I'm getting hungry. So let's go inside the kitchen because I promised you that. I love hanging around boiling water.

06:00 John Daub: So it takes about 5-10 minutes to make a bowl of ramen. And I think they've been working pretty hard this morning. I walked by here early in the morning cooking the broth, making everything. And then they weigh it because I ordered 150 grams. So that's what I'm going to be getting. That gives the noodles some texture here. Whoa. That's so interesting. Usually there's some sort of a ladle or something or a strainer that they put it in. But this goes straight into the water. That's pretty amazing. So it has some freedom in there as it boils. I've never seen ramen cook like that. This is pretty exciting that something good is going to happen. Basically, I'm going to eat ramen. That's something good. You can see the chashu (braised pork) steak is all here. All ready for the customers. They're going to be coming in about an hour. And I was adding some shoyu, which is what the shop is very famous for. Oh, chicken oil. So some soy sauce and chicken oil was added for the base of it. Oh, I can smell it. It's a chicken oil. If it was turkey oil, that would be very Thanksgiving-ish.

08:21 John Daub: Hey, FunGets USMC. Happy Thanksgiving. And Raymond Centeno. I think this will cover the 10 yen shortage. Raymond, it certainly does. Thanks a million. So the chef will feel to see if the ramen has been done and cooked enough. Usually it's about three minutes or so. It'll cook inside the boiling water. And again, like the way he with his hands here kind of pushed it all together, it makes some of the noodles give it a really good texture, a different texture in there. So I'm pretty interested. I'm pretty curious to try the noodles. There's so many elements to good ramen. It's not just the noodles. It's also the broth. It's also the soup. And it's also the chashu and the toppings that you see over here. So there's so many different things going on with a delicious bowl of ramen. And then you can see the broth, which is usually stewing inside of a pot for hours and hours, sometimes the night before. Ramen chefs are very protective of what goes in there, because that is the secret sauce.

09:53 John Daub: So we're going to be having a secret sauce. Like tamagokake gohan (raw egg on rice), which is just a raw egg on rice. And I want to talk a little bit about the Japanese eggs. But it's like a soy egg. And not in the sense that it's a soy-based made egg, but soy sauce on the egg. So vegetarians are probably tilting their head a little bit going, what? Oh, good. Look at that. He's got the rice coming out here. So I have to do the egg myself, I think. So that makes it a little bit fun. It requires some work on my part. There's the egg right there. So I have a job. Job one. Crack the egg and eat it. So there's your soy egg. Checking the noodles. I work for food. Looks like we're close. This is very cool to be inside the kitchen. I could work here. Would you come and eat at this ramen shop if I was working here? It probably wouldn't be as good, though.

11:38 John Daub: That hot broth just mixed in there with the chicken oil. And you can see how that nice, really delicious layer of oil on top there. That fat with soy sauce. Homemade soy sauce. Oh, wow. It's glistening. Raymond's got it right. Whoa. Let's leave the kitchen area. Assume the position. I'll take your order. What kind of ramen is this? Wow. Looks delicious.

13:16 John Daub: So this is soy sauce ramen, right? Soy sauce ramen and egg rice. Wow. So soy sauce ramen and egg rice. Is the pork the duck? The pork is the pork. No, it's actually pork steak. And the toppings. Is it menma (fermented bamboo shoots)? It's menma. Oh, menma. Where is the shop? The shop is near Hatchobori, Tokyo Station. Wow. The shop, the main shop is at Tokyo Station, Hatchobori. It's right next to it. That's right. It's not that far away from my neighborhood. It's Hatchobori. Awesome. All right, so let's try this here. I'm pretty excited about this. I'll put a link in the description also. But if you are coming to Tokyo, if you are going towards this area, Sakura Town is a really amazing place to check out because I'm a big fan of Kengo Kuma and the designs that he's done. He also designed the Olympic Stadium. And just over there is his design for the Kadokawa Culture Museum, which is really interesting. Again, if you want to take a look inside, it was there after hours. You can go check out that livestream yesterday.

14:37 John Daub: Wow. I'm a big fan of ramen. I like udon too, but this looks really good. This looks really good. I'm going to eat this tamagokake gohan last and just focus on the ramen first because the ramen noodles, I want to eat that before it gets too soft. Let's try the broth here first. Oh, it's nice. I really like shoyu ramen. Tonkotsu ramen is a pork bone based broth that's really, really thick. This is shoyu ramen, so it's not as heavy. It's lighter. But shoyu ramen is saltier. So it's got this feeling. Just watch my face. That's how it tastes. But this is interesting because of the chicken oil. It's very different than pork oil or pork based ramen. The chicken really is different. That makes it very unique.

16:13 John Daub: Let's get into the noodles. So we have chicken and soy based broth. And then we have pork steaks. So we have an entire... If we had some beef in there, we'd have the trifecta. Wow. Look at these noodles here. Check out these noodles. They're just different. There's so much texture to these compared to regular ramen noodles. And this is kind of a flat noodle. Do you see that? Let's do another ramen pull here. This is a flat noodle. So wow. It's just kind of... Every single bite is going to have some of that soup in there. And some of the cracks on that noodles. So this is going to be great. All right. Stop playing with your food, John. Eat it.

17:13 John Daub: Hey, Jennifer French is here. How you doing? And Jay Sharpless. Welcome. Tony P. Lisa O. That is so good. It's just different. Every single ramen noodle that you have, there's so many different elements. There's never a bowl at a shop that is the same. Every time, every shop you go to, it's just different. It's a different experience, a different taste. The shop is different. The chef is different. The soup is different. The noodles are different. The toppings are different. And everything just... As I said, traveling for food is pretty incredible. But you don't have to actually go to Hatchobori, to the head shop to eat it. You can eat it right here at Sakura Town, which is pretty cool.

18:16 John Daub: And I like this. The ramen travels well. Mmm. Ah, it's really good. Let's try this pork steak here. Chashu is what we call the steak inside of ramen. Here's a piece of chashu steak. And wow, is that a really... It's a lot thicker than normal chashu steak. Usually it'll be cut into about a third of that, but you get a full slice of it. And you can see that it's been marinated and then really good. Really cooked. There's gonna be some flavor in there. I'm not quite sure how. That's part of the secret. Chefs won't tell you everything. They'll tell you the bare minimum. The fat around it. It had taken in some of the broth. So not only do you have that meaty taste to it, which is the steak, you also have that broth that's being pulled into that chashu steak inside of the ramen. So good. Usually there's like little crevices in the meat when they cut it. You know, it's a piece of meat. It soaks into there and when you bite it into it, you get some of that secret broth. That delicious broth that... wow.

20:02 John Daub: I like what they've done with the menma. Menma is bamboo sprouts. And what they've done with it, instead of having them usually they're about this thick, instead they've kind of shredded them and then added it in. And the reason why this is really good is that by shredding the menma, it kind of absorbs up some of that broth. Again, everything is really mixing well with this broth in the soup. Menma has a really crunchy consistency to it and it adds like a completely new dimension to every bowl of ramen.

21:15 John Daub: Let's shift gears now into the tamagokake gohan. The soy egg. I don't know what else to call it. So what makes this unique here? And you can see this chef on the screen there. What makes this unique is that raw eggs in Japan, they're really, really good. And they can be fresh because they come straight from the farm. And in the US, they use some sort of chemical which cleans the eggs, but it also thins the shell, which makes it easier to get things like salmonella and so on into the egg. So you have to refrigerate them. Japanese eggs don't have that. The shells are a lot thicker. So it protects it a little bit better. They're just cleaned in a different way. So first thing we do is we're going to crack this into the bowl here. Just the raw egg. Wow, look at the color of that yolk. The next thing we do here is add in some soy sauce. How much soy sauce do we need? A little? It's good, so we need a lot, right? Oh, yeah, that's true. I'm asking the professionals. Just a little bit, okay. Just a little bit. I sometimes go a little bit too far. So then you want to mix it all up. Look at the color of that egg yolk. It is a very deep orange. And a lot of that has to do with the way that the chickens live and what they eat. Happy hens lay happy eggs.

23:24 John Daub: Next, we put it on top of the rice. I know, some people are probably saying, what is this? It's uncooked rice with egg. This is weird. But it is so good. I'm telling you, it's so good. Tamagokake gohan. It's not a dish that you're going to find probably anywhere else except for maybe Japan. Sashira04 writes in here, my daughter, Rain, and I would like to wish you a happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, Rain. Happy Thanksgiving. Nick Chong, happy Thanksgiving. This is an unusual Thanksgiving dish. Michael Sassano, just in case you need more noodles. I kind of do. They're making them over there, too. Hey, Danny's here. Happy Thanksgiving, Danny. Bon appetit. And Jay, Jennifer, Tony, and Lisa O, Cody, Raymond. Jeff Kennedy was here. Hey, Jeff in Philadelphia. Happy Thanksgiving.

24:33 John Daub: So let's try this tamagokake gohan. It's just rice with raw egg and some soy sauce. See, for me, the taste of rice is just so good. The rice on its own. But you have a premium egg. You have delicious koshihikari rice. And then you have some soy sauce, which is homemade fresh soy sauce. It is so good when you put the three together. On their own, all three of these ingredients might seem a little bit bland. But together, it is really special. Combined with these amazing noodles and broth, it is an amazing meal. Very nutritious with the rice. A lot of vitamins in that. Oh, I found some treasure down there. Another piece of chashu steak.

26:01 John Daub: Any last questions? Happy Thanksgiving. See here, I'm checking it out. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Recommendations for drink. Beer is good for drinks, right? Well, I don't order it, but I recommend beer. Japanese beer? The recommendation from the chef is beer for drink. This is my breakfast, so I'm not going to have that. Thank you so much, everybody, for watching. Great questions. Leave a comment below if you have anything to add. Check out this amazing concept, which is the Walker Ramen Kitchen here at Sakura Town. Have a bowl. You can even talk to the chef. I like the fact that they have dividers to keep everything safe. LSG, thank you. Happy Thanksgiving. See, stay safe. They're going to be opening the shop for a second. My access is over. Have a good day. Have a good night, everybody. See you again in the next live stream. Bye-bye. That's a lot of steak.