Lambkotsu Ramen focuses on just four bowls of lamb noodle soup, all completely halal. You’ll just need to travel to try it.
Is it better than Taro’s? That’s invariably the question Brisbane ramen tragics ask when a new Japanese noodle shop opens.
And there have been plenty over the years since Taro Akimoto opened his first restaurant on the ground floor of what was then the Boeing House on Adelaide Street in 2010. Ramen Danbo, Genkotsu, Beppin, Men Ya Go, Kengu: all boast diehard regulars who swear their shop produces the greatest bowl of ramen in the city.
But Taro’s remains, if not necessarily the best, then the yardstick by which all others are measured.
It’s interesting because Akimoto has a habit of zigging where others zag, exploring different types of ramen through expanded menus and special events, and even launching a Taro’s Izakaya last year.
His latest project, though, is perhaps his most surprising yet: a shop far out in the city’s deep south, in Underwood, dedicated to halal lamb tonkotsu ramen. It opened last week.
“It’s our suburban shops, Stones Corner and Ascot, that do the best business at the moment,” Akimoto says. “The closer you get to the city, particularly since the pandemic, the tougher things seem to be.
“I was already thinking about a Taro’s outlet at maybe North Lakes or Redcliffe. But once I settled on a halal outlet, there was a lot of pull from the Muslim community, which has a huge presence in Underwood: ‘Please come to Logan,’ they would say. So we started looking, found a kebab shop for sale, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity.”
Akimoto hasn’t always appreciated lamb. He did some growing up in the United States and said his first experience eating the protein in that country was a lamb chop with mint jelly.
“It wasn’t something I liked at the time,” he says, laughing. “After going back to Japan, though, I had a trip to Hokkaido, where they raise a lot of lamb. I remember having this local dish: lamb barbecue with a sort of sweet soy and teriyaki flavour profile, and I really loved it.
“Once I moved to Australia, where it’s a staple, I started to acquire the taste for it.”
By now, Akimoto has been toying around with lamb ramen for years.
“I can’t remember exactly when, but one customer told me that he had it almost 10 years ago,” he says. “We did a lamb event, with lamb ramen, lamb gyoza – everything was lamb. It was a one-off but we had super feedback.
“We eventually put it on the menu at South Brisbane, and we were still using a little bit of sake in the flavouring, so it wasn’t strictly halal, but we had a lot of customers who said, ‘If you can make this strictly halal, we can bring more people to try it.’
Taro’s new shop isn’t a Taro’s. Instead, he’s branded it Lambkotsu Ramen.
It’s relatively tiny even by Taro’s standards, with just 15 seats, and it’s serving just four variations on lamb ramen: original with bay leaf and coriander seed oil, a red lamb ramen with Taro’s signature chilli and sweet miso oil, a black ramen with burnt garlic black oil, and a green lamb ramen with sweet pickle, basil and kale oil.
There are no sides, no beer. For now, Akimoto wants to do one thing and do it well.
“For now, I have my business cap on, and we’re keeping it very efficient and very intentional.”
“Once I settled on a halal outlet, there was a lot of pull from the Muslim community, which has a huge presence in Underwood: ‘Please come to Logan,’ they would say.”
Taro Akimoto
To make the ramen completely halal, Akimoto is currently using lamb shoulder sourced from Top Cut Butcher in Logan Central. He’s long been happy with his soup process but he needed to change the tare, or seasoning, to eliminate the sake.
“These alcoholic seasonings are amazing,” Akimoto says. “They’ve been crafted over hundreds of years so it’s very difficult to replicate that taste. It took me about three goes to get it right.”
Akimoto’s approach was to use the first step of making sake that involves polishing rice, steaming it and then adding a koji mould to convert the rice starch into sugar. But instead of then fermenting it with yeast, which would create alcohol, he’s added a vinegar – boiled down to squeeze out some of the acidity – and then supplemented it with a bit of extra caramelised sugar.
“I managed to create something very similar to what I used to create with the sake and the mirin.”
He’s using the same housemade noodles that he tosses into his Taro’s ramen, but with turmeric and cumin added to the dough.
“You can probably only taste that with the original of the four variations,” he says. “But it matches really well with the lamb, and it slowly dissolves into the soup, changing the taste after three our four minutes.”
Otherwise, it’s smoked dashi kunsei nitamago for a big slug of umami, with fresh shallots, coriander and Szechuan pepper to balance out the richness.
Akimoto has largely kept Lambkotsu Ramen on the down low, so says the shop hasn’t been particularly busy thus far.
“If it starts to get as busy as our other locations, we’re going to be pressed for demand,” he says “But there’s so much great food in Underwood so we feel that energy down here, yes.”
Open daily 12pm-2pm, 5.30pm-8pm
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Matt Shea is Food and Culture Editor at Brisbane Times. He is a former editor and editor-at-large at Broadsheet Brisbane, and has written for Escape, Qantas Magazine, the Guardian, Jetstar Magazine and SilverKris, among many others.
