Ramen specialist soups up city’s food scene
JAPANESE ramen specialist Tonkotsu has chosen Birmingham as its first location outside London and will start serving its oriental soup dishes next month.
It is starting as a concession inside the Bullring but already has ambitions for a standalone site in the city.
Tonkotsu translates as pork bone, and is the name of the creamy ramen typical in Kyushu, Japan’s southern-most island.
Its first restaurant launched in 2012 and there are now six Tonkotsu restaurants across London.
After a great amount of Twitter interest from Birmingham foodies, the chain decided it was time to branch out into the West Midlands.
“I could tell that the people of Birmingham who have been to London and had Ramen really love it, and there’s nowhere else to really get that in Birmingham,” said Emma Reynolds, co-owner of Tonkotsu.
“We’d like to have a few more Tonkotsus outside of London, if this works in Birmingham then we’ll look for an individual restaurant site outside of Selfridges.”
Although the restaurant chain mainly offers a range of ramen, Birmingham’s new counter will also be serving dishes such as katsu curry.
She added: “In other pan-Asian restaurants you will see dishes from different countries throughout Asia, whereas we do one thing and we do it very well.”
What is ramen?
The traditional Japanese dish prides itself on the deeply flavoursome soup stock which is made from pork and chicken bones with vegetables and sometimes fish bones.
The stock is then filled with Chinese-style wheat noodles – varying in thickness – and usually combined with pork and a gooey-yolked egg. There are four types of ramen: shoyu, miso, tonkotsu and shio each offering different toppings and tastes.
