炭火焼濃厚中華そば海富道(Shi-Fu-Do in Kanda, Tokyo)

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炭火焼濃厚中華そば海富道

In an ever-changing world of socially conscious eating, food from the oceans is a huge concern. Food goes to waste from the ship to the market to the wholesaler to the restaurant. Estimates put fish waste at around 30%, higher than many other foods we eat. A newly opened ramen shop in Kanda, Tokyo is doing its part to help. By using “wasted” fish from the nearby Toyosu fish market, they can make an excellent bowl from food that would otherwise go to waste.

海富道 can be pronounced as Shifudo (しふど). Get it? Seafood!

Mackerel, sardines, salmon, shrimp, and squid ramen are your choices.

鯖、鰯、鮭、海老、烏賊.

They use an interesting technique to make their ramen. The entire fish is cooked over charcoal and then turned into a thick paste. Nose-to-tail ramen. The shop calls this style doukei (道系ラーメン) which roughly means “the way of” style. The character 道 is used in Japan to mean philosophy or doctrine, and they want to emphasize that this is a new style of ramen. Right on!

Ramen is served shokudo style with toppings, rice, and pickles served on small plates. The addition of rice is excellent. The flavors of the soup are quite strong, and the rice helps cut the soup a bit. Did I mention the soup is strong? You can see the little black bits of roasted fish if you look closely. Please only come if you love fish!

I went with the shop’s standard mackerel. Saba is one of my favorite fish. It’s oily and rich, perfect for grilling. In this case, those fish oils blend in with the broth and slurp up nicely with the straight noodles.

The shop master let me try some of the sardine-flavored soup as well. If the mackerel was a seven on the fishy umami scale, this was a nine. Very wild. A full-on assault of the taste buds. I wanted to try a couple of the other soups, especially the shrimp, but my palate was finished after this one.

Fish from the market. I called this “wasted” fish but maybe that isn’t the correct word. It’s just fish that hasn’t been sold. In 2020 and 2021 there was a massive shortage of buyers in the restaurant world. In order to curb the spread of COVID-19, the Tokyo government asked restaurants to stop serving customers at 8:00 pm. They also banned alcohol sales for a time. Do you want some grilled fish and a beer at 8:30? Forget it.

A lot of perfectly good fish went to waste. The master at Shifudo works directly with a fish seller to get the day’s leftovers. Whole fish, shrimp heads, and salmon fillets.

The shop was created by the Mugen Group which operates izakayas and sushi shops around Japan.

Official site here.

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