Little more than a year ago pretty much every bus in North East London passed through that single lane road with a narrow pavement either side. Sometimes they'd be queued up the length of the road, with cyclists scraping along the sides, shoppers squeezing between the buses to cross the road, everyone inhaling the noxious diesel fumes.
Hackney Council pedestrianised the road in the face of resistance from business owners, concerned that nobody would come to visit the street without all these buses chugging down it. On a Saturday afternoon, Narrow Way is now bustling - more so than before. It's now a pleasant place to be. The shops down Narrow Way are not fancy by Hackney's standards: there are big chains like Primark, McDonalds, Greggs and a sad Marks and Spencer, alongside betting shops, newsagents, bakeries, gold shops, pawnbrokers. It works just fine without vintage denim boutiques and organic wooden spoon shops.
Tonkotsu is the first fancy new business to open up on Narrow Way. The shop used to be a dingy, beige Post Office - and before you get your gentrifier-skewering pitchforks out, it's only moved up the road to a shiny new shop. The unit has been opened all the way back, with just an unobtrusive, plain glass front revealing to the passerby its new purpose. At the front is a long bar, which leads you to a loungey section with semi-circular leather banquettes around tables, before you get to a more canteen-y space with a glass boxed noodle-making room and an open kitchen alongside it it. Ropes are strung across the ceiling like noodles being pulled. It's pretty neat actually.
Ramen is booming in London, and Tonkotsu was one of the first of this spurt. As with most hypey booms, ramen has become aficionado territory, and some people will give you chapter and verse on different restaurants' broths and noodles. I'm no expert, but when I tasted the Tonkotsu broth I knew it was something special. So rich with meatiness that it's almost creamy, Tonkotsu's broth is velvety, luxurious, pungent. The noodles -made on site in the aforementioned glass boxed noodle room - were al dente, which I liked, but my fellow diners would have preferred a slightly softer noodle.
There is a concise menu of ramen - the Tonkotsu is the classic pork ramen with a pork broth, with generous sheeths of delicious pork belly, with deep flavoured bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, and THE MOST INCREDIBLE seasoned slow boiled egg.
My friends each had the seafood ramen - a special for this branch of Tonkotsu. It had a couple of juicy prawns, a handful of fresh clams, some squid, as well as bean sprouts and bamboo shoots. The broth was a mixture of sea food and chicken, and was less thick and creamy than the pork broth, but delicious nonetheless.
A further two ramen dishes are available: chilli chicken, and miso and shitake mushroom. Prices range from £9 - £11, and they will pretty much fill you up.
There are a number of sides on the menu. As we were there during soft launch, a few that we were particularly keen to try were sold out. Namely the okonomiyaki, the Japanese cabbage and kelp pancake, which is a special for the Mare Street restaurant, but has been an E5 delicacy for some time thanks to the ace Sho Foo Doh, who has a Thursday - Saturday okonomiyaki residency 100 metres away at Pacific Social Club. I love it there, so I was keen to see how Tonkotsu's compared.
Edamame beans were hard to fault, and I enjoyed the Shimeji mushroom korokke - creamy croquette balls, with shitake mushroom inside, on a bed of tart mayo. Yum. We were less impressed by the pork gyoza, which were quite lightly filled and under-seasoned.
The kara-age chicken - the Japanese spin on fried chicken, whereby the chicken is brined in soy suace, ginger and garlic before getting crisply fried - was perfectly juicy inside, and had a crunchy coating without any clagginess. I thought the kara-age chicken from the Paddy Field stall on Chatsworth Road's Sunday market had the slight edge on flavour, but Tonkotsu's are perfectly good.
The dessert menu consists of one excellent dish: a selection of mochi-encased ice cream balls. Mochi is a squidgy, slightly aromatic glutinous rice based sweet. Sometimes it's fashioned into fruit shapes, but here it contained salted caramel (natch), vanilla and yuzu - an Asian citrus fruit. My favourite was the yuzu, which was almost champagne-y in taste with a tart citrus-y freshness to it.
Tonkotsu Mare Street does last orders at 11, so good for a quick supper before going out, a proper meal, and a post pub filler-upper. Prices are reasonable, including for cocktails, where many are around the £7 mark, and the menu is extensive. We particularly enjoyed their twist on a whiskey sour with sake.
I expect Tonkotsu will be busy if the level of interest generated by the soft launch was anything to go by. Despite okonomiyaki being available up the road, everything else about it is fairly unique for the surrounding area. Whether or not Narrow Way becomes a foodie/boozy destination remains to be seen; I expect many restaurateurs will watch Tonkotsu's trade closely, but of course part of the appeal is being one of a small number of such businesses, rather than a street flooded with generic restaurants. In any case I hope Narrow Way continues to be a street that serves everyone.
Tonkotsu is the first fancy new business to open up on Narrow Way. The shop used to be a dingy, beige Post Office - and before you get your gentrifier-skewering pitchforks out, it's only moved up the road to a shiny new shop. The unit has been opened all the way back, with just an unobtrusive, plain glass front revealing to the passerby its new purpose. At the front is a long bar, which leads you to a loungey section with semi-circular leather banquettes around tables, before you get to a more canteen-y space with a glass boxed noodle-making room and an open kitchen alongside it it. Ropes are strung across the ceiling like noodles being pulled. It's pretty neat actually.
Ramen is booming in London, and Tonkotsu was one of the first of this spurt. As with most hypey booms, ramen has become aficionado territory, and some people will give you chapter and verse on different restaurants' broths and noodles. I'm no expert, but when I tasted the Tonkotsu broth I knew it was something special. So rich with meatiness that it's almost creamy, Tonkotsu's broth is velvety, luxurious, pungent. The noodles -made on site in the aforementioned glass boxed noodle room - were al dente, which I liked, but my fellow diners would have preferred a slightly softer noodle.
There is a concise menu of ramen - the Tonkotsu is the classic pork ramen with a pork broth, with generous sheeths of delicious pork belly, with deep flavoured bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, and THE MOST INCREDIBLE seasoned slow boiled egg.
My friends each had the seafood ramen - a special for this branch of Tonkotsu. It had a couple of juicy prawns, a handful of fresh clams, some squid, as well as bean sprouts and bamboo shoots. The broth was a mixture of sea food and chicken, and was less thick and creamy than the pork broth, but delicious nonetheless.
A further two ramen dishes are available: chilli chicken, and miso and shitake mushroom. Prices range from £9 - £11, and they will pretty much fill you up.
There are a number of sides on the menu. As we were there during soft launch, a few that we were particularly keen to try were sold out. Namely the okonomiyaki, the Japanese cabbage and kelp pancake, which is a special for the Mare Street restaurant, but has been an E5 delicacy for some time thanks to the ace Sho Foo Doh, who has a Thursday - Saturday okonomiyaki residency 100 metres away at Pacific Social Club. I love it there, so I was keen to see how Tonkotsu's compared.
Edamame beans were hard to fault, and I enjoyed the Shimeji mushroom korokke - creamy croquette balls, with shitake mushroom inside, on a bed of tart mayo. Yum. We were less impressed by the pork gyoza, which were quite lightly filled and under-seasoned.
The kara-age chicken - the Japanese spin on fried chicken, whereby the chicken is brined in soy suace, ginger and garlic before getting crisply fried - was perfectly juicy inside, and had a crunchy coating without any clagginess. I thought the kara-age chicken from the Paddy Field stall on Chatsworth Road's Sunday market had the slight edge on flavour, but Tonkotsu's are perfectly good.
The dessert menu consists of one excellent dish: a selection of mochi-encased ice cream balls. Mochi is a squidgy, slightly aromatic glutinous rice based sweet. Sometimes it's fashioned into fruit shapes, but here it contained salted caramel (natch), vanilla and yuzu - an Asian citrus fruit. My favourite was the yuzu, which was almost champagne-y in taste with a tart citrus-y freshness to it.
Tonkotsu Mare Street does last orders at 11, so good for a quick supper before going out, a proper meal, and a post pub filler-upper. Prices are reasonable, including for cocktails, where many are around the £7 mark, and the menu is extensive. We particularly enjoyed their twist on a whiskey sour with sake.
I expect Tonkotsu will be busy if the level of interest generated by the soft launch was anything to go by. Despite okonomiyaki being available up the road, everything else about it is fairly unique for the surrounding area. Whether or not Narrow Way becomes a foodie/boozy destination remains to be seen; I expect many restaurateurs will watch Tonkotsu's trade closely, but of course part of the appeal is being one of a small number of such businesses, rather than a street flooded with generic restaurants. In any case I hope Narrow Way continues to be a street that serves everyone.
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