New and approved: Den Ramen, Auckland
New and approved is The Spinoff’s new series highlighting fresh hospo offerings. This week, Charlotte Muru-Lanning recommends a new ramen bar just off Karangahape Road.
What is it?
Den is a tiny, dinner-only ramen shop built around one of life’s great comforts: a steaming bowl of noodles in broth. The name itself reveals much about the place. In Japanese, den refers to the concept of tradition, an apt descriptor for the restaurant’s meticulous approach to ramen. In English, a den is a sanctuary, and the restaurant feels very much like one – a cosy, cave-like slip of a room devoted to slurping ramen.
Where is it?
You’ll spot it first by its glowing lantern out front. Slightly sequestered from the bustle of Karangahape Road, on Cross Street, Den occupies the former Top Café Dumpling House site at the base of the Ironbank building.
Most importantly, it sits around 100m away from the gleaming Karanga-a-Hape Station, rumoured to be opening in August this year as part of the much-anticipated City Rail Link. It seems quite fitting that a restaurant so heavily influenced by Tokyo – a city famed for its trains – would find itself beside one of Auckland’s newest stations. From the tables which spill onto the front footpath, the station’s striking facade is framed by the surrounding buildings, and it’s fun to imagine the place becoming a natural pit-stop for public transport users once trains begin running later this year: somewhere to grab a bite straight off the train before a gig on Karangahape Rd, or to pop into after work before catching the train home.
What’s new about it?
It opened at the beginning of June, so it’s new in the most literal sense. But it’s also new in concept. By that I mean that while there are plenty of good ramen restaurants in Tāmaki Makaurau these days, there are surprisingly few that embrace the kind of singular focus so common in Japan with concise menus and a meticulous commitment to getting every single element in the bowl exactly right. Rarer still are places where that perfect bowl arrives alongside a perfect cocktail. Den does both.
Who’s behind it?
The restaurant is a collaboration between Taku and Noriko Hida, whose Miso Ra food truck has amassed a devoted following around the city, Pici and Ooh-Fa co-founder Kaz Suzuki, and events specialist Isabel Buckley. On the evening we visited, the co-owners were busily working alongside three other staff in the restaurant – welcoming guests, running drinks, ladelling noodles into bowls, and then later whisking away those same, by that point empty, bowls.
What are the vibes?
In short: compact, casual and cool.
Quarters are tight in this moodily lit, narrow restaurant: 10 stools along the L-shaped counter facing the open kitchen, three teensy tables inside and three more on the footpath outside. This scale lends itself best to solo diners and pairs. I’d certainly not advise turning up with a group larger than three.
There’s a confident but easy-going energy to the place, helped along by a well-chosen playlist (mostly 90s hip hop on the night we dined) and the fact that, while there’s a general hum of activity, my dining companion and I never strained to hear each other talk. Special mention to the Baina hand soap and bag hooks in the bathroom, and further hooks tucked underneath the bench. Small but very-much-appreciated details.
It feels important to note that they don’t take bookings, so we waited around 20 minutes for our table, which was just enough time for a stroll along Karangahape Road before dinner. Tables turn quickly, dishes arrive in quick succession, and we were in and out in just over an hour. This is less a place for a drawn-out, languorous meal and more a place to pop in for something brisk, delicious and unfussy.
What should I order?
Den echoes the format of Pici and Ooh-Fa in its commitment to a singular thing done really, really well: ramen. Alongside four ramen variants is a concise lineup of small “snacks” (three cold and five hot), and a short drinks list.
On the one-page drinks list there are just two wines (a white and a chilled red), while the rest spans liqueurs, sake, spirits, beer and cocktails, all of it on-theme and considered, and at times even somewhat surprising. Even the non-alcoholic options – a Chidori soda made by Millers Coffee just down the road, and ramune (Japanese lemonade) – feel imaginative.
We began our meal with a yuzu sake on ice, then a couple of snacks – the cold cucumber slices designed to be swiped through a blob of accompanying miso and buckwheat being an ideal curtain-raiser. I did, however, find myself jealously eyeing the neighbouring tables’ bowls of crispy chicken skins and beautifully composed plates of raw tuna with umeboshi vinaigrette.
For the main event, we ordered the shoyu ramen and the shio ramen. Both broths are based around a chicken stock. If you’re a sodium-holic like me, the shoyu with its deeply umami, soy-laced broth, chashu pork belly, tamago egg and a single sheet of nori should absolutely make it onto your order. The shio, a clearer, cleaner and perhaps more complex-tasting chicken and snapper broth with chashu pork shoulder and fresh bamboo, was the favourite of my dining companion. There’s also a shoyu option with both cuts of pork and a vegan miso option built upon a miso paste made by Lillius chef Fraser McCarthy. The salty sour ume tonic sipped in between gulps of broth and noodles was, and I do not say this lightly, one of the most enjoyable cocktails I’ve had in a while.
Like a proper ramen bar in Japan, there’s no dessert. If you’re in need of a sweet punctuation to your meal, a glass of plum wine will do the trick, or you can wander up the road to Acho’s (which just opened a second outpost in the old Bar Celeste spot) for their mochi ice cream.
What’ll it set me back?
We spent $124 between two ($62 apiece) for two bowls of ramen, a couple of starters, two cocktails and a Kirin. Those after something lighter could happily spend around $45 per person by way of a bowl of ramen, a carafe of sake to share and perhaps some edamame or bamboo shoots in crispy chilli oil – an ideal prelude to whatever the rest of the evening holds, whether a gig or a nightcap somewhere nearby.