Long on Noodles

Ebisu Ramen first won my heart as a tiny Fountain Valley cafe serving a variety of ramen noodle dishes. Now it has become a major operation, your friendly noodle superstore.

When Kazuto Takeda first opened his restaurant, it was a narrow, modest storefront, like most noodle houses in Japan. Ramen restaurants are everywhere in that country. You find them on the train platforms, department store basements and within the maze of alleyways in every large Japanese city.

But few are like the current Ebisu. Late last year, Takeda remodeled his restaurant, greatly expanding the dining area and adding dozens of dishes, including udon and soba noodles, to the menu. (He has been busy elsewhere in this mall complex, too. In addition to Ebisu Ramen, Takeda and his family now own and operate Ebisu Market, a Japanese supermarket; Bon Marche, a French bakery and spaghetti house; and Ebisu Shoten, a Japanese-language bookstore.)

And happily, the expanded Ebisu hasn’t lost its focus. This is still, at bottom, a ramen restaurant, a place where Japanese businessmen and other noodle lovers unite to roll up their sleeves and slurp long, garlicky noodles from giant bowls of broth. Many regulars prefer to sit on the tall stools of the snazzy ramen bar to watch the chefs work their noodle magic.

The new design is handsome. The dining room is modern--lots of blond wood, a blue-and-cream tile floor, lots of ambient light. The decorative art runs to baked Japanese enamelware and Provencal-themed watercolors in pastel frames. The latter is the only European touch to what otherwise is a purely Asian extravaganza.

If you’ve never eaten at a Japanese noodle house, start with a bowl of ramen. All the ramens are eaten from enormous bowls with the help of huge curved spoons. Seasoned ramen eaters use chopsticks to coax the noodles out of the broth, which is always, as here, served mouth-searingly hot. (If you can’t handle chopsticks, by the way, it’s worth learning how before coming here. I’ve tried to eat these noodles with a fork and failed miserably.)

Purists can test the waters by ordering shio ramen, which is nothing but ramen noodles submerged in a soy-flavored broth. Broth is critical to good Japanese noodle soup, and this one stands out. It’s made from dried mushrooms, kelp and smoked bonito.

One of my longtime favorites here is sutamina ramen: a heap of noodles, fried cabbage, cooked bean sprouts and pork sliced wafer-thin, plus a partially coddled egg, still in the shell. One of the best menu additions is hakata ramen, a delicious cloudy pork broth filled with ramen noodles, barbecued pork, bean sprouts, red ginger and sesame seeds. I also like chanpon, the Portuguese-inspired city dish of Nagasaki. It’s a bowl of ramen loaded with shrimp, pork, squid, vegetables and Japanese fish cakes.

Meanwhile, the other popular Japanese noodles, soba and udon, now debut on this menu in several guises. Soba are grayish green buckwheat noodles, served hot or cold with various toppings. I especially like the soba with vegetable and shrimp tempura--lightly battered and fried shrimp and vegetables, usually eggplant, green beans and pumpkin.

Udon are a starch-lover’s dream: fat white flour noodles with a slightly pasty chewiness. Ebisu Ramen does a mean version of kitsune udon, the noodles topped with green onions, spinach, fish cakes and cubes of fried tofu. In all, there are more than a hundred ways to eat your noodles here. Slurp away.

From what I’ve said, you may have guessed that Ebisu’s menu is no longer confined to noodles. There are, for instance, several versions of okonomiyaki, grilled pancakes with savory fillings. I had one stuffed with squid and shrimp, plastered with a thick, Worcestershire-like sauce. It was basically fine, but doughier than I would have liked.

There are also golf-ball-sized octopus dumplings (takoyaki), which are considerably lighter than the Japanese griddle cakes. They’re an eggy batter cooked in a molded griddle, dotted with bits of steamed octopus and served on a wooden plank.

Ebisu Ramen also serves rice dishes and a list of daily specials, which include miso soup, salad and steamed rice. For instance, there is a great dish of spicy tofu and ground pork on rice (mah-boh), and also the thick (and thickly breaded) pork cutlets known as tonkatsu, which no one would ever mistake for schnitzel. Kids seem to like the rice bowls called oyako donburi, where chicken bound with lightly scrambled eggs tops a mound of steamed rice.

For dessert, I’d just go next door to Bon Marche and have an eclair or a piece of strawberry whipped cream cake, but there are Japanese desserts for the adventurous on the Ebisu Ramen menu. Anmitsu is a generous scoop of the red bean paste known as anko, various canned fruits, cubed agar-agar and gumdrops. Yes, gumdrops. Chocolate “puffet” (parfait) is canned fruit with vanilla ice cream, chocolate syrup and whipped cream, minus the agar-agar and bean paste.

So that’s not what you want? Go next door, will ya.

Ebisu Ramen is inexpensive. Ramen is $4.50 to $6.25. Okonomiyaki are $5.50 to $7.50. Rice dishes are $2.50 to $5.50. Desserts are $1.95 to $3.95.

BE THERE

Ebisu Ramen, 18940 Brookhurst St., Fountain Valley. (714) 964-5993. 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Cash only.