It took several visits to Oksumi for me to realize just how special a place it is. Oh, make no…read moremistake, I knew that I liked it from the first visit, but it took a bit of reflection, and a bit of exploring the menu, for Oksumi's charm to really unfold, before me.
Read other reviews, and the phrase "nothing fancy" keeps appearing. Another reviewer calls it "simple" and "to the point." This, right here, is the soul of Oksumi. It isn't a restaurant using the idea of ramen as a canvas for the ego of a chef looking to reinvent the dish. It is a ramenya, and its menu is a love letter to ramen. It does not need to uplift or reinvent ramen, because ramen is already perfect, as it is. One does not taste ego in Oksumi's dishes; one tastes respect, care, craftsmanship, and balance. Perhaps most importantly, one tastes every ingredient, and one tastes the role that every ingredient plays in the whole of one's ramen experience.
As I explored the menu, as I tasted each element in my bowl, I found myself, again and again, noticing the quality of each element I tasted. The karaage is crisp, juicy inside, and its notes of melting fat aren't lost, even against a spicier base. The tonkotsu is silky upon the tongue, the shio clean but not at all simple, a subtle medley of salt, chicken, and the transparency needed to let the more delicate elements like the cilantro and bean sprouts express themselves, even as the fresh garlic and bonito express themselves more assertively. Oksumi's care and attention to balance encourages one to see these simple, elemental forms of ramen not as "basic" in the slightest, but as works of art expressed in their own whitespace. Approach the shio here not with the need for every space to be filled. This dish is a culinary Gokui no Uta. If you think there is something, there is nothing; if you think there is nothing, there is something.
Over a fragile moment with calamari, in which I reflected that I had never once tasted a rubbery or greasy piece of squid at Oksumi, and in fact, had never tasted a *better* piece of squid, not even in my years on the California coast, it really came home for me. Oksumi is a place in which I stopped consuming, and started appreciating the "something-there." I wandered the menu, from tonkotsu black garlic (a flavor hurricane) to simple shio and the robustness of vegetarian Nagoya-style ramen, and let myself dissolve into the moment, into the Kai, the "something-there" that manifests when one's mind stops playing with its expectations and assumptions, and simply experiences.
My happiest moments, as a diner, happen when a meal silences my unreasonable, arrogant, chattering mind, and brings me to a lighted door of experience somewhere between the late Leonard Cohen's semi-contrition and the late Anthony Bourdain's quiet confessionals in moments of being a stranger at a table. Again and again, I return to Oksumi, to understand what ramen *is*, and to humble my difficult, noisy mind to a level of quiet that can appreciate the Kai, the "something-there" that appears only when the mind is still, quiet, and allows itself to experience without a commentary track of judgment.
Calling Oksumi "simple" is the highest praise one can pay it. Its ramen does not *need* adornment because its ramen is as adorned as ramen might ever need to be. Your attention is the substrate upon which Oksumi's elemental, straightforward ramen expresses itself.
This place is an underrated treasure.
