of ramen with roast pork slices on top] usually comes with very thin pork slices. But this guy gives you very thick pork. There is a humongous amount of noodles, and a half-inch-high layer of liquid lard on top.”
“It sounds disgusting,” I said.
“Actually, it is disgusting,” Masa confirmed. “The first time you eat it, you get sick. But the same day, around midnight, you start to feel like, ‘Oh, my God, I wanna eat that again.’ So the next day you go back, and you eat it, and you go, ‘What the heck was I thinking? This is crazy. I don’t want to ever eat this again.’ Then you just keep going in this cycle, until finally you are addicted.”
I ordered cold sake for both of us—a junmai from Kochi Prefecture.
Masa explained that the moment of truth in any Jiro visit was when you gave your order. There were basically just two items on the Jiro menu: small and large. What Masa had been talking about so far was the small. As a rule, a first-timer was not supposed to even think about a large, but Masa said the decision was harder than it sounded.
“The wait is always at least forty minutes. Then you finally reach the entrance, and this gray-haired, big-bellied owner looks up from his vat of boiling pig carcasses and says ‘Nani?’ Then you have to say either ‘sho’ (small) or ‘dai’ (large). And even if you’ve made up your mind that there’s no way you could eat a large that day, after standing in line in front of this owner and watching him cook soup for, like, five or ten minutes, you’ll start whispering to yourself, ‘Maybe I can do it! Maybe I can do it!’ And when you’re in that mode, you’re in trouble. Because when he all of a sudden comes at you with ‘Nani?’ you’ll just blurt out ‘dai!’ —large. And then you’ll think, ‘What the hell did I do? I can’t eat that much.’”
“It sounds like you don’t really know what you’re going to do until you come face-to-face with this guy.”
“Exactly. You get in front of him, and you really can’t think straight.”
Masa took a sip of sake and his face turned serious.
“Once, after I finished, like, one-third of the noodles, I felt like I had to go to the bathroom.”
“Is that a problem?”
“There’s actually a bathroom there, but no one uses it.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s too embarrassing! Think about it. Everybody’s waiting forty minutes to get in, and if you make them wait more, the owner’s going to get mad at you. You’re always feeling this kind of pressure. Pressure. Pressure. I started slowing down because I couldn’t finish it, and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, how can I get out of this place?’ So I put the pork underneath the noodles, trying to at least hide it, and then I put the bowl on the counter and screamed, ‘Thank you very much—good-bye!’ And I just ran away and couldn’t go back there for three or four months because it was so embarrassing. I was so traumatized because I couldn’t finish it. I was like, ‘What if it happens again?’ ”
Masa said he suffered alone for much of the time he stayed away from Ramen Jiro. Eventually, though, he admitted his failure to friends. To his surprise, he learned that many of them had encountered similar problems, so they banded together to perfect their pre-Jiro conditioning.
“You can’t have a big breakfast, obviously,” Masa warned. “But an empty stomach is almost as bad. My friends tried a lot of different foods before going there. This one guy figured out that the best thing to have was fruit. And the best fruit was an Asian pear. The worst was a banana. Don’t even think about eating a banana. Anyway, we would eat a pear before going there, and then be like, ‘I think I’m ready. I think I’m ready.’ ”
T hat night, when I got home from Murasaki, I typed “Ramen Jiro” into Google’s Japanese search page. I found not only the street address and a map but also a Web site that oriented Jiro
“It sounds disgusting,” I said.
“Actually, it is disgusting,” Masa confirmed. “The first time you eat it, you get sick. But the same day, around midnight, you start to feel like, ‘Oh, my God, I wanna eat that again.’ So the next day you go back, and you eat it, and you go, ‘What the heck was I thinking? This is crazy. I don’t want to ever eat this again.’ Then you just keep going in this cycle, until finally you are addicted.”
I ordered cold sake for both of us—a junmai from Kochi Prefecture.
Masa explained that the moment of truth in any Jiro visit was when you gave your order. There were basically just two items on the Jiro menu: small and large. What Masa had been talking about so far was the small. As a rule, a first-timer was not supposed to even think about a large, but Masa said the decision was harder than it sounded.
“The wait is always at least forty minutes. Then you finally reach the entrance, and this gray-haired, big-bellied owner looks up from his vat of boiling pig carcasses and says ‘Nani?’ Then you have to say either ‘sho’ (small) or ‘dai’ (large). And even if you’ve made up your mind that there’s no way you could eat a large that day, after standing in line in front of this owner and watching him cook soup for, like, five or ten minutes, you’ll start whispering to yourself, ‘Maybe I can do it! Maybe I can do it!’ And when you’re in that mode, you’re in trouble. Because when he all of a sudden comes at you with ‘Nani?’ you’ll just blurt out ‘dai!’ —large. And then you’ll think, ‘What the hell did I do? I can’t eat that much.’”
“It sounds like you don’t really know what you’re going to do until you come face-to-face with this guy.”
“Exactly. You get in front of him, and you really can’t think straight.”
Masa took a sip of sake and his face turned serious.
“Once, after I finished, like, one-third of the noodles, I felt like I had to go to the bathroom.”
“Is that a problem?”
“There’s actually a bathroom there, but no one uses it.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s too embarrassing! Think about it. Everybody’s waiting forty minutes to get in, and if you make them wait more, the owner’s going to get mad at you. You’re always feeling this kind of pressure. Pressure. Pressure. I started slowing down because I couldn’t finish it, and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, how can I get out of this place?’ So I put the pork underneath the noodles, trying to at least hide it, and then I put the bowl on the counter and screamed, ‘Thank you very much—good-bye!’ And I just ran away and couldn’t go back there for three or four months because it was so embarrassing. I was so traumatized because I couldn’t finish it. I was like, ‘What if it happens again?’ ”
Masa said he suffered alone for much of the time he stayed away from Ramen Jiro. Eventually, though, he admitted his failure to friends. To his surprise, he learned that many of them had encountered similar problems, so they banded together to perfect their pre-Jiro conditioning.
“You can’t have a big breakfast, obviously,” Masa warned. “But an empty stomach is almost as bad. My friends tried a lot of different foods before going there. This one guy figured out that the best thing to have was fruit. And the best fruit was an Asian pear. The worst was a banana. Don’t even think about eating a banana. Anyway, we would eat a pear before going there, and then be like, ‘I think I’m ready. I think I’m ready.’ ”
T hat night, when I got home from Murasaki, I typed “Ramen Jiro” into Google’s Japanese search page. I found not only the street address and a map but also a Web site that oriented Jiro
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