フジヤマ55 Fujiyama 55: sir mix-a-lot

Mazemen, or abura-soba, are "mix noodles." Noodles which possess no soup. That's bad. But you get your choice of topping! That's good!

Fujiyama 55 is a shop that specializes in tsukemen, dip noodles, and mazemen. The shop's name is a play on words. The number 55 in Japanese can be read "go-go," as in "Go, go to the ramen, boy." The shop is owned by a fairly large conglomerate called soupbeat that operates 55-related branches around the country. soupbeat is helmed by man who claims to have eaten over 500 bowls of ramen since becoming a ramen shop owner. 500 might sound like a lot, and it is, but there are professional ramen bloggers out there who have eaten over ten times that amount.

Fujiyama 55 shops have been springing up around the country, but most of them are still located in their  hometown Aichi prefecture. This was a shop within walking distance to Nagoya Station, though you will be sweating heavily by the time you get there. You are born sweating heavily in Nagoya.

Taiwan mazesoba (800yen)

Fujiyama does things a bit differently, even by mazesoba standards. Your noodles don't come in a pleasing porcelain bowl, but rather a soulless steel orb one would associate with mixing pancake batter. You are told to mix your noodles with the plastic chopsticks, and this produces a lot of metal clanking noises.

Fujiyama's produces a one-of-a-kind mazesoba which it calls a Taiwanmazesoba. Taiwan ramen consists of a shoyu (soy sauce) base ramen soup topped with a mix of ground beef, nira garlic chives, bean sprouts, and a whole lot of extra spices and peppers. Even big ramen fans outside of Nagoya are unaware that the dish did not come from Taiwan, but is rather the proudest thing that Nagoya has ever invented. Supposedly, many moons ago, an insane chef of a Taiwanese restaurant cooked it for his starving minions so they would stop complaining. The rest is history.

Fujiyama 55's Taiwan mazesoba consists of all of those wonderful ingredients, plus a raw egg (a staple in any mazesoba worth its salt). Mix, mix some more, and eat furiously. It's not the tastiest mazesoba, as the fat is pretty muted in favor of a little bit of ground beef and a lot of bonito. And it's not even close to the best Taiwan ramen, where the soup mixes with the spicy beef for a sear that is painful delicious. Did I mention you eat the whole thing in a bowl straight out of the kitchen?

This is why. Once you're finished with the noodles, you're left with a heaping pile of greasy beef and onions and bean sprouts. You heat this steel bowl of pork and fat on the plate warmer sitting innocently before you...

...and pour the oily goodness (with another egg!) on top of a bowl of rice. Round 2. You win.

Nagoya, Chuo-Oosuka 3-11-16

Closest stn: Nagoya (it's really not that far, about a 4 min walk)

Open from 1130am-1130pm Monday-Friday (1130am-330pm and 4pm-1030pm Saturday-Sunday)

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