Hello friends! It’s been a while since a new ramen shop popped up in Vancouver but it was inevitable. Lil’ bun and I decided to go to Kokoro Tokyo Mazesoba on their grand opening weekend to get in on their free mazesoba give away.
Kokoro Tokyo Mazesoba interior
We were both surprised as to how spacious it was on the inside for a restaurant downtown. The restaurant comfortably seats 70 people. Plus they have a roomy waiting area with stools on the inside beside the hostess stand too.
The two of us were lucky enough to be seated right in front of the kitchen. From here we could see the busy cooks making hundreds of bowls of mazesoba and ramen in soup. I do mean hundreds because they were getting them out like no tomorrow.
On the menu it says that their noodles are housemade but their noodles came in boxes. So I guess that means they boil it in house? The noodles here are actually thicker than typical ramen noodles so they take 7 minutes to boil instead of the usual 5.
What is mazesoba?
So what is mazesoba? I would say it’s like the bibimbap of ramen. It’s basically hot soup less ramen with a bunch of toppings on top that you mix together before you eat it. I’m familiar with cold ramen being served this way. However, this is the first time I’ve had hot ramen prepared like this.
Food menu
They have a variety of mazesoba options on the menu ranging from $13-18. If soupless ramen isn’t your thing, they also serve ramen in soup, don and appetizers.
Dessert menu
As though the mazesoba wasn’t unique enough, they also serve a variety of drinks in bags and homemade desserts. We were both too full to try any of these items but they looked so tasty!
Now the menu doesn’t share the secret of the mazesoba sauce. From what we could see, it is a mixture of a variety of things including fatty pork broth, hot sauce and something creamy?
Once they put the broth into the bowl, they add the noodles and stir them like no tomorrow until the noodles are saturated in the sauce before adding the toppings on.
Tokyo Mazesoba
We both had the opportunity to try the tokyo mazesoba which is the original version of the dish. If you are not a fan of green onion, this is not the dish for you because there was heaps of green onions in there! In addition to the insane amount of green onion, there was also spicy ground pork, seaweed, chopped garlic and a raw egg yolk. Yes, it was extremely satisfying to poke the egg yolk.
We were both surprised as to how creamy the noodles were. It actually reminded us of alfredo sauce and we didn’t even get the “creamy mazesoba.” I’ve never had noodles of this thickness before. Even though it’s a “soba noodle,” they are not thin like the ones you find with zaru soba or yakisoba. They were in-between a ramen noodle and udon in size. The noodles were nice and chewy too.
At first we thought that there wasn’t very many noodles in it considering that the bowl is originally $13, but it was actually very filling because of the fattiness of the sauce. We definitely never had anything like this before.
Since this was a noodle dish, naturally it was impossible to eat all the noodles without having a bunch of leftover toppings falling to the bottom. This is not a problem though because at the end of your meal, they will give you a small ice-cream scoop of rice to mix in with the rest of the toppings to wrap up your meal. No topping is left behind!
Bite sized summary:
Mazesoba is unlike anything we’ve had before.
Not sure if the $13-18 a bowl pricing is justified but it is downtown and we were beyond full by the end of the meal.
Clean, large restaurant with nice ambiance.