麺や百日紅

Within the labyrinth of Shinjuku station, you can find anything. From $300 watermelons to bicycles. High-end cameras to hotels. Movie theaters to ramen shops. Saru-Suberi (Salisbury?) is one of those shops that you have to either stumble across or have someone who has previously stumbled there show you. For those adventurous folks out there, it’s somewhere near the Toei-Shinjuku line in Shinjuku Sanchome station, exit C2.

I really don’t understand the name of this shop. Hearing “saru”, I thought of 猿, monkey. At least our primate friend makes an appearance on the menu. Order your tsukemen “monkey size” and you get it topped with extra pork, an egg, and some fried chicken.

The miso tsukemen with… double strange taste? 二段味変? My kanji is getting a workout on this one. You should order it though. It’s their excellent miso/pork/fish soup with the adition of a spicy miso dollop and a saucer of burnt garlic oil.

Eat it 3 ways. Start off normal, dipping noodles into the soup.

Then drizzle the burnt garlic oil in the soup. The new taste is rough and smoky.

Finally mix in the spicy miso paste for an extra kick.

With every good tsukemen shop, there is some sort of point worth mentioning. There’s the sweetness of King Kong or the roasted fish taste of Fuunji. Sarusuberi brings the onions. 5 kinds of onions. Roasted, carmelized, raw, and different kinds of green meld together in every bowl.