I don’t want to tell you about the little dish of salty heaven that was crunchy chicken skin or the crunchy oyster mushrooms with a curry mayo. I definitely don’t want to tell you about the oodles of thick tasty noodles or the broth made up of layer upon layer of flavours because I want to be able to get a table at my neighbourhood's (and Cardiff's) hottest new restaurant whenever I want.
However, I will tell you, because I think everyone should taste each of them and because I want you to share in the success story of this local noodle love story. I want you to see how great of a local restaurant we now have in our city. I want you to watch the elation of the chefs high fiving at the end of their service and owner James with a look of both delight and relief crossing his face as table after table leave congratulating him.
So in short, save yourself reading a few hundred words and book to go to Matsudai Ramen. Now. Go support a new business that has done the groundwork and is turning out bowls of food that left us all full, delighted and one of us, naming no names, covered in noodle broth.
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Matsusdai is one of those foodie projects that started just before lockdown, thrived in lockdown thanks to its delivery of ramen kits, has filled pop-ups around the UK, and all being fair in the world, will continue for a long time to come. It's had plenty of foodie endorsements in its short life, including from Jay Rayner, Tim Anderson, Tom Parker Bowles and Melissa Thompson.
Now it has a permanent home in the old NatWest bank in Grangetown, Cardiff. Formerly the Lufkin coffee shop, somewhere locals wanted to love but that just didn't hit the spot when it came to service, post-bank, Lufkin gave it a rustic interior. Now it’s sleek, fun and all but complete.
We bagged a table on Matsudai's opening night, not that you’d have known it was its first night. As I told James as we left, the highest compliment I could give him was that it was like it has been there forever. The food and service were on point and slick and that's something established restaurants can't always deliver.
As we walked past half an hour before our booking you could hear the buzz from round the corner. It was packed and that’s so incredibly nice to see, not just because it’s a venue I’ve wanted to see come to life but because it showed people were enjoying themselves.
There are currently five options of small plates on the menu so, being greedy and excited, we ordered all of them.
The chicken scratchings (£2.50) were devoured almost immediately by our carnivores, the next favourite was the oyster mushroom kare karaage (£8) with even the meat eaters preferring it to its chicken brethren (also £8) and the spicy moyashi salad (£5), a combo of beansprouts, chilli oil, sesame and spring onion, was a refreshing interlude to the fried plates filling our table. The summer corn split the table, two loved it and two not so much, but seen as I loved it you can hear me tell you to ordered this little parcel of charred goodness with an almost sweet miso taste.
We tucked into the small plates first, left undisturbed and then ordered our mains. Unless you're a ramen pro, of which none of us claimed to be, the mains list takes a bit of getting your head around, partly as there as a couple of versions which are pretty similar (but veggie or meat based) and also because there’s so many ingredients in each dish. We asked our waiter to explain to us where we should be going and she set us on the straight and narrow, telling us the staff all had a tasting night a few days previously so she could speak with authority.
I went for the Yasai Tantanmen (£13) and two others ordered the meat equivalent, the Tantanmen. They're a vegetarian or chicken dashi with half an egg, sesame, soy, ragu, cucumber, greens, bean sprouts - the list goes on - and there was one order of Wontonmen (£15), a chicken and fish double soup base with garlic, egg, nori, chives and wontons, amongst others. I added tofu to mine (an extra £2.50) and there were other sides of pork and a spice bomb, a kind of spice paste that was enough for everyone to share.
The mains arrived in big deep bowls, Japanese spoons on the side and were they as good as we hoped? Yes.
In mine there was sweet cucumber, a deep veggie Ragu, noodles which weren’t just a carb but tasty and filling, there was the cream of coconut and the heat of spice. There was flavour, there was texture, there was love. The meat equivalent had equal numbers of slurps, their meat ragu being something that initially caused confusion (what's an Italian staple doing in a Japanese bowl?) but was slurped up.
The Wontonmen was passed round and was a bit more divisive. You could see the difference in the broths, and the stronger taste thanks to the fish element was a little much for some. Luckily, the person who ordered it, thought it was delicious and was the only person on the table to finish their mains.
I should tell you I love Japanese food. So much so I once managed to convince my husband we should take a fairly impromptu holiday there and I honestly don’t remember ramen as good as this there. But as James explains: "Authentic ramen is something of a misnomer - ramen is such a new food, relative to other Japanese cuisines, that traditional ramen doesn’t yet exist - or not really." The places we ate ramen there were local neighbourhood places too, and I remember the feeling of a healthy and sustaining meal but I never remember the attention to detail to every ingredient we had ever several thousands miles closer to home. Authentic, new, traditional, I am no expert, but every bite was utterly delicious.
The menu will expand, with more drinks promised. As a fish but non-meat eater, I hope the actual ramen bowls do too as I would love to see more options I could order, but all that will come in time and James has already said the dishes will change seasonally. I can't wait to see this place develop.
One of our group, who was tasting ramen for the first time, said it was like a hug in a bowl, and it was but a really really good hug on a day you really really need it.
When I need a pick me up, Matsudai will be my first port of call. If you want to sample something clever, something tasty, and something authentic (ish) then get yourself here. Let's just say one of our group finished their meal with something that sounded like “Duck Wagamama” and I couldn’t agree more.
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