Masaki Saito’s new ramen restaurant makes only 100 bowls a day

Name: Ramen Tabetai Contact: 154 Cumberland St., ramen-tabetai.ca, @ramentabetai.to
Neighbourhood: Yorkville
Owners: Masaki Saito and William Cheng Chef: Masaki Saito (Sushi Masaki Saito, MSSM, LSL) Accessibility: Not fully accessible

Chef Masaki Saito’s takeover of Toronto’s food scene continues. His first restaurant, Sushi Masaki Saito, is the only spot in Canada to receive two Michelin stars, and LSL—a collaboration with French chefs Didier Leroy and Christian Le Squer—is an attempt at getting three.

Any restaurant with Saito in the kitchen inevitably charges a hefty price. Both his eponymous restaurant and LSL come with a minimum price tag of $680 per person. MSSM, his slightly more casual Yorkville sushi spot, is able to charge $95 for its omakase service only because Saito doesn’t lay a hand on the fish. If he did? “That would make it too expensive,” he says.

Related: Inside the making of LSL, Toronto’s wildly ambitious new fine-dining powerhouse

But his latest project, Ramen Tabetai, a funky little noodle shop in Yorkville, harks back to Saito’s humble beginnings in Hokkaido. “When I was a teenager, I ate Jiro-style ramen, which is characterized by its thick, chewy noodles and rich, porky broth,” says Saito. “I was a poor teenager, and ramen was cheap, flavourful and filling—and it had some vegetables in it. I ate it everyday out of necessity. Young people need to eat a lot, and it was all I could afford.”

While ramen was not the food that took him down his culinary path, Saito says it was a ramen-based diet that gave him the energy to get him where he is today. Tabetai (which translates to “I want to eat”) is his attempt to help out the students of today. “I believe that, if you have the ability to help young people find happiness, then you should,” says Saito. “It was my dream to feed a new generation the way I was fed and to recreate the flavours I was accustomed to, which you can’t find anywhere here in Toronto—and to keep the cost down.” To that end, the bowls are $23, and a student membership ($10 a year) brings the cost down to $18.

At Tabetai, the tonkotsu-broth process is long and elaborate, and the noodles are exclusive and imported. The ostensible real value add is from Saito’s special—wait for it—“essence,” a secret elixir that gets ladled into each bowl at service for a blast of umami.

The Food

One giant pot of 12-hour tonkotsu broth made every day is enough to feed 100 customers. Each bowl of the velvety broth is anointed with a tangle of golden Jiro-style noodles, a dollop of fresh garlic, a knoll of crunchy sprouts and a porky trifecta: slices of tender pork belly, pork bone marrow and a scoop of unctuous pork fat. (Don’t even think about asking for a plant-based option.) Add-ins are minimal: there’s house-made garlic mayo, poached egg, squares of top-shelf nori, pickled ginger, curry powder or—for those who still need more umami—chef Hiro Tsugami’s spicy gochujang paste. When the 100 bowls sell out, it’s no soup for you. But there is a selection of onigiri, the standout being the Yukari, a mixture of sushi-grade rice, secret rice seasoning and dried shiso powder.

The Drinks

With the restaurant’s liquor licence still in the works, the beverage list is currently confined to non-alcoholic drinks like imported Japanese sodas and jelly-filled juice. There’s also zero-proof Japanese beer and a variety of iced green teas. Saito’s goal is to keep Tabetai open late and eventually introduce a sake menu.

The Space

Clean lines, stark wooden booths and pop-art murals give the room a modern Japanese aesthetic that’s somehow both elegant and fast-casual. Carson Ting, the artist responsible for MSSM’s graffiti-style mural, produced Tabetai’s fun wall art of noodle-bowl people floating in a ramen sea.