Musashino Aburasoba, Kanda (武蔵野油学会)

Ahhh, I just love the name here – “Oil Study Meeting” or if you wanted to be extravagant, “Scientific Society for the Study of Oil”. ‘Musashino’ refers to an area of Tokyo that was formerly famous for beef carpaccio.

These guys now occupy the space where Nocchi was in western Inner Kanda (it’s actually on the street across Sotobori from the west-side shotengai, with Xi’an at the front. Matt, that’s the place where we met the other time, in case you need to find it.)  I shan’t link to that review, as you obviously won’t find Nocchi. I see from M.A.’s web site that they’ve only been open about 3 weeks; I’m pretty sure there was something else in here between them and Nocchi. Maybe the space is haunted. Well, good luck guys. This is only their first branch outside the Waseda original.

Aburasoba evidently sounds bad to certain people; someone thinks it sounds gross. Depends on the ratio of oil (or fat) to noodle; the best way to describe this is that it’s like a ‘dry ramen’, one where you get most of the flavor by means of a thick sauce that coats the noodles. [You can get tantanmen in this style too, and I highly advise it.] Maybe they make a pork-bone soup and just keep reducing it until the water is gone and they’re left with oil and flavor. Another good way to describe this is that it’s like pasta with sauce – you mix it so the sauce coats the pasta, but it’s not soup by any means.

It is however, pretty darn good. You can’t see the noodles down there for the solid helping of menma and pork and kamaboko and pea sprouts; they were decent noodles, and the soup base was tasty. Amazingly, it was a bit too small. I would actually recommend supersize noodles here, which is a rarity (and an extra cost, which is also a rarity in this type of bowl).

When someone was getting disgusted about this, I somehow failed to mention what added toppings I asked for – spicy fish-egg mayonnaise, and spicy chili oil paste. Mmmmm hmmmm, that’s a topping of whipped oil for your oil noodles.

But worthy of further study, I think.
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