Toki Underground

Toki's Classic Ramen with pork loin.  Minus the egg for me

The first thing I observantly noticed is that Toki Underground is actually above ground.  Wow, I thought, when I walked in.  How clever of them :)  

DC is an area of burgeoning Asian food influences.  While there have been some trendy sushi places and even a couple of good Japanese restaurants (Sushi Taro and Makoto), there are many other types of Japanese food that have not been well represented in DC.  Toki Underground is an attempt to fill in that gap.

I've heard of some noodle bars popping up in DC but this is my first time making it out to one.  Until now, my noodle adventures have been primarily surrounding finding the best Pho restaurants in the area.  Toki has a decent following so far and with a quick check on yelp before going, it is clear that you will be waiting in line for a table if you go during peak hours.  We decided to go at around 11 PM on a Saturday night to avoid dealing with the rush.

Toki's ambience is slightly sexy, dark and fun. We were seated at the bar right in front of the noodle chef.  My first impression was ohhh, he's not even asian!  Let alone Japanese.  That's a bit racist to notice but in an area that has almost ZERO Japanese owned/run Japanese restaurants, I was hopeful to see a smiling Japanese noodle cook, preferably one that is 82 years old and looks like Jiro.  But behind him, I did notice a couple of asian-looking fellows cooking and I proceeded to order.

Their menu is pretty simple although their website didn't seem to list the noodle soups when I checked.  The main section of the menu is a list of different noodle soups available.  They also offer a few different add-ons like pork cheeks or extra egg.  I really wanted to try their dumplings but I was so focused on the ramen soup that it didn't happen.

The ramen soup was amazing.  Here is the problem that you'll have by trusting reviewers.  You have some people who grew up eating Ramen for 25 cents a bag and they can't understand paying 10 dollars for a bowl of it nor do they have the palette to taste the subtle differences in some cases.  Then you also have people who have had great ramen in Asia and that's also a difficult comparison.  What you get at Toki is an influenced version of Ramen that should be evaluated on its own merit.  For me (recently visited Japan AND grew up on bags of cheap Ramen), the broth was excellent with a rich and buttery flavor.  The pulled pork was tender and I was able to get a little bit into each bite of noodles I picked up.  The noodles were noodles.  For me, Ramen noodles are either good or they are overcooked.  People try to get very descriptive and critical of ramen noodles and with Soba or Udon, I can understand that.  Not with Ramen.  To top off the above listed ingredients were a piece of Nori (dried Seaweed), a soft-boiled egg (I held this back), some sesame, scallions and their seasonal vegetable... mustard greens.  The mustard greens were actually a perfect addition.  You could peel away a little piece off the cooked roll floating in my delicious broth offering each bite a little contrast in texture and some bitterness. One of my friends got the pork cheeks and devoured them.

We finished our meal with some chocolate chip cookies and milk.  For 7 bucks for 3 cookies, this is the only thing that seemed a bit pricey since my world famous bag-of-cookies costs half that and yields me about two dozen cookies.

I can't wait to return to Toki Underground.  I'm even looking forward to bringing my kids when I come back.  It was worth the hype and the wait.  Hopefully they will quickly expand to another location now that they've proven that DC is ready for high quality ramen!  Avoid coming in big groups as they only have bar seating and don't take reservations.  Great place to bring a date and it won't break the bank if you are on a budget.


Rating - 5 Stars.

Udon Noodles in Japan!

http://www.shichihukuudon.com/
If you want great noodles, where do you go?  I'm sure there are many places in Japan to get great noodles, but as the case my be, my family actually owns an Udon noodle shop in Hanoura.  We visited there for lunch today and to my delight, after I enjoyed a bowl of Udon noodles and some Japanese pastry desserts, I was given a tour of the kitchen and a lesson in how to make Udon.

Before we head into the kitchen, let's check out the final product Udon:

We didn't know what to order so they brought us  6 bowls of Udon and a couple of bowls of special rice.

My host provided me a lesson on how to eat noodles in Japan.  He coached me on the differences between American style and Japanese.  Americans = silent.  Japanese = Noisy.  He said I need to slurp the noodles loudly and mix the noodles with air.  I'm not sure if this is for flavor, to cool the noodles or both.  Here is his demonstration video :)

Making Udon doesn't seem too hard, however, like most things, there are subtleties that make it an art form.  To make Udon, you first make the dough.  In my case, we were already dealing with pre-made dough.  Udon is a flour based noodle though while Soba is made from buckwheat.  The dough is pretty much in a 3-5 inch thick dough ball about 8 inches wide.  The trick is to flatten the dough into the perfect thickness and shape so the noodles can be cut.  Then the noodles are cooked for the perfect amount of time, cooled in a cold water basin to kill the cooking process, then scooped into the right portion and left to drip-dry.

I have a great video of the master at work preparing the dough but my blog provider seems to be unhappy with the size of the video.   I did manage to get one photo of her though as she's cooking the noodles.

Mattie and I were invited to try various stages of preparing the dough.  Here is photo of Mattie stomping on the dough-ball to flatten it into a manageable size:

I took over from there and attempted to roll the dough into a flat 24 inch square...

My teacher was getting clearly annoyed with how badly I was mangling his dough.  Come on man, I'm family! 

You alternate between rolling the dough and then sticking it in this
machine that helps mush the dough thinner. A master can do it in 7 cycles... Mine sucked after about 10.

Cooling and Portioning the noodles

Placing them on the drying rack