There’s a lot to love here, and also two things to be careful of.
So far, it’s been a pretty mild-temperature June in Japan, but this week brought a sneak preview of the midsummer heat as it suddenly soared to 33 degrees Celsius (91.4 degrees Fahrenheit) on Monday in Tokyo. As luck would have it, though, Monday was also the city’s first chance to try a brand-new kind of shaved ice.
You won’t find it at a fancy cafe or the freezer section of the convenience store, either. No, if you want to try the Kakigori Hiyashi Miso, you’ll have to head to Tokyo ramen chain Bankara.
We’d actually been looking forward to eating the Kakigori Hiyashi Miso since last week, when we first heard about it. Breaking down the name, kakigori is the Japanese word for “shaved ice” with “hiyashi miso” meaning “cold miso.” Oddly enough, the name leaves out what many would say is the most important piece of information: that this is shaved ice ramen.
And to be clear, this isn’t some sort of psuedo-ramen, like the “pizza” flavor of pizza potato chips. This is a legitimate bowl of authentic miso ramen, but with one big change: along with the standard ramen noodles and toppings, there’s a mountain of shaved ice.
“But wait,” you might be thinking, “doesn’t putting shaved ice on ramen dilute the broth and dull the flavor?” Ordinarily it would, but this is no ordinary ice. Instead of freezing water, Bankara freezes its actual made-in-house miso broth. As a matter of fact, when the Kakigori Hiyashi Miso is served, there’s no liquid broth in the bowl at all.
Ramen connoisseurs will tell you that the first step to enjoying a bowl is to take a sip of broth, so we started by taking up a spoonful of ice. As we slipped it into our mouth, we were shocked at how incredibly salty it tastes.
That’s not to say Bankara’s broth is saltier than any other ramen, however. It’s just that usually ramen is served piping hot, so you can only take a small sip at a time. When it’s all ice, you can gulp down an entire spoonful all at once, and that much flavor, delivered so suddenly, is overwhelming. So instead, we recommend giving the bowl a few stirs with your spoon first, letting the ice mix with the noodles, chashu pork, bean sprouts, and menma (fermented bamboo shoots).
Doing that really smooths out the flavor, and made our second bite extremely tasty. From then on, it’s pretty much like eating a regular, but very good, bowl of ramen, just cold and crunchy instead of hot and soupy. Actually, as you eat the ice will start to melt a little, but even then the liquid stays refreshingly chilled.
A surprise benefit is that the low temperature and liquid level means that the noodles stay firm for the entire meal. With regular ramen, if you don’t eat it quickly enough the noodles become soggier and soggier, but with the Kakigori Hiyashi Miso they keep their texture even if you eat at a leisurely pace.
There is a potential downside, though. This is still a bowl of shaved ice, and if you eat it too quickly, the Kakigori Hiyashi Miso will give you a brain freeze just like any other flavor of the summertime treat will, so you’ll want to pace yourself accordingly.
Like with a lot of outside-the-box culinary innovations in Japan, the 880-yen (US$8.20) Kakigori Hiyashi Miso is available for a limited yet undefined time, but it’s an experience worth having at least once if you’ve got ramen on the brain (just make sure you don’t freeze it).
Related: Bankara location list
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