Here is something most ramen guides skip: ramen is not a spicy food. The classical bowls of Tokyo, Sapporo and Kyushu get their depth from tare, the concentrated seasoning base, and from soups that took all night, with no heat in them at all. Shio bowls are clear and saline, shoyu bowls lean on soy, miso bowls on fermented weight, tonkotsu on pork bone. Spice, where you do meet it in Japan, came later, as shops started blending chilli into miso and oil for customers who wanted their bowls to bite back. A spicy ramen done well is a deliberate build, and it is why the chilli work in our kitchen got researched the same way the soup did.
The best seller is the spicy one
The most famous bowl in the shop is the Oniyama Jigoku, our fried chicken ramen, named for the crocodile hell of Beppu, the onsen city we take our name from. It is the best selling ramen on the menu, and it is the bowl the chilli scale was built for. The fried chicken holds its crunch against the soup, the black fungus and seaweed carry the Kyushu broth, and the chilli count decides how loud the whole thing gets.
Reading the chilli scale
Every ramen here carries a chilli count, and the ladder runs from one to sixteen. One or two is where most of our regulars sit: the full flavour of the bowl, with heat you feel but can keep eating through. Our owner, who introduced the scale when the restaurant opened in 1999, eats level two. The benchmark is honest: a person who can eat a Thai bird's eye chilli, chilli padi, straight without trouble sits at two, and four is twice that, the first serious step, for eaters who found two comfortable. Six is where The Sunday Times reported a customer fainting in 2005, mid-challenge, colleagues cheering her on. Eight was the summit in those days, and it defeated the paper's reporter after one sip. The ladder has kept growing since, and the top now stands at sixteen, a level we serve with the same warning every time: it is a serious burn, and you should start lower if this is your first visit.
The advice that comes with the scale has not changed since the Far East Square days. Treat it as a ladder. Order one or two, see how the soup carries the heat, and climb on your next visits. The heat compounds through a bowl, what feels manageable in the first five minutes sits a great deal heavier by the last of the soup, so leave room to be surprised in both directions.
What the heat is
Chilli heat is capsaicin, the compound in the white ribs of the pepper, and it is measured in Scoville units, a scale a pharmacist named Wilbur Scoville invented in 1912 by asking panels of tasters how far a chilli extract could be diluted before the burn disappeared. A bell pepper scores zero. Pure capsaicin sits around sixteen million. Where our chilli paste lands is a kitchen secret, and the 2005 profile had it that suppliers handling the paste complained their hands burned from the mixing, which says most of what needs saying. The soup that carries it is Kyushu pork bone, no MSG, and the paste goes in by the count you give the staff.
If you overshoot
Capsaicin dissolves in fat and not in water, so a glass of water spreads the burn instead of stopping it. Milk, rice, or another sip of the pork bone soup all work better, in that order of relief. And if you want the flavour of the fried chicken ramen without the climb, order it low on the scale. The bowl is the best seller at every level.
The chilli count for every bowl is marked on the printed menu, and the kitchen will talk you through it before you order. Come find us at 3 Pickering St, China Square Central.