Salaryman - Surry Hills, NSW

I've always, always wanted to be a cook or a chef...I never made it but I still dream about it day and night. It was only in the last couple of years that I'd found what I was truly passionate about and that's ramen. It all started when I had my first legitimate bowl of ramen in a tiny shop in the heart of Tokyo a little more than a decade ago. Since then, I haven't had enough of the stuff. One day, when I have enough incentive and nothing to stop me, I'll fly to Japan and sign up to ramen school (yes, that exists). For now, I'll need to live vicariously through my dining experiences of which, my most recent was Salaryman (last night).

I managed to separate myself from the Mrs and had the opportunity to eat out with a mate. Knowing that he is as much of a foodie as I am, I decided to set the location at a place I assumed we both wanted to try out. We arrived at roughly 6:30pm and got seated right at the bar where the open kitchen was situated. My mate is a really, really chill guy but I genuinely felt horrible since my focus was split between maintaining concentration on the conversation we were having, and being distracted by the magnificent work of the brilliant chefs who were just an inch from where we were seated. Seeing the chef delicately and meticulously slicing bonito just fascinated me to no end. So clearly, it was the perfect seating arrangement.

Once we'd made our decision on what we wanted, we promptly placed our our orders and waited patiently for our dishes to arrive. I find that it's nice to occasionally catch up with a friend you haven't seen in a sometime. It breaks the  monotony of daily life and gives you a bit of context and insight into theirs. As we got into our discussion, our first order arrived: oysters! A dozen of them! I'll be honest, I'm a sucker for decadent, luxurious things...foie gras, caviar, uni and oysters...I love it all. Salaryman does this particularly well which is great.The oysters are super fresh and still retain that briney flavour, but are light enough that I think even people who don't regularly enjoy oysters could appreciate this. The vinaigrette has hints of ginger and rice wine vinegar (I think) which is great for cutting right through it and opening up your appetite.

Shortly after our oysters, our order of prawn toast okonomiyaki arrived. This was a really, really interesting dish to me as I'm a Chinese guy who has a palate way more in tune with Japanese flavours. This dish felt like the best of both worlds. Prawn paste is sandwiched between two slices of white bread, crumbed and then fried for a really crunchy texture. Next,  they just pack on the umami by adding okonomiyaki sauce, kewpie mayo, bonito flakes and aonori. Flavour wise, it tastes just like your favourite do-it-yourself Japanese pancake but texturally, it's definitely a prawn toast (minus the excess of sesame seeds and overused, greasy oil).

We finished up our starters and watched as the kitchen prepared our mains. The first to reach us was our order of the bone marrow with duck ham and fried milk bread. Seriously, this dish was impressively delicious. It's fatty, rich and beefy but has so many different elements that come together and make it great. The bone marrow is legit just that: two pieces of beef fat roasted over an open wood fire. You then eat it with soft, pillowy fried bread and the duck ham which gives it this savoury, salty element. I'd be able to down one (or three) of these by myself.

Finally, my most anticipated dish arrived: the pork and pipi ramen. Visually, it looks nothing like any other ramen you've had: it's much smaller which can be confusing because of the price they charge, but straight away, you can tell that a lot of thought went into this humble bowl of noodles. The soup stock isn't gravy thick like other Sydney ramen establishments but had an almost equivalent meaty depth to it. The pippies were cooked in the wood fire until they'd just opened up, yielding that delicious meat as you tear the pippies from their shells. The thick cut pork belly was super fatty but could have been a bit softer or more tender in my opinion. The noodles were wavy and clung to the soup well with a delicate yet springy snap. Finally, the black garlic and sesame oil rounds out the whole bowl by giving it that additional layer of moreish, aromatic flavour. The best bits of the ramen were actually the two ajitsuke eggs that sit on top. Eggs in ramen are usually just salty and molten, whereas Salaryman's rendition has a defined acidity to it which really helps cut through the richness of the whole bowl... It's an experience and a half eating one of those eggs. It's a really, really great and interesting bowl of noodles but the combination of all the heavy flavours can leave you a bit stuffy even much later into the night.

Salaryman claims to be the best ramen in Surry Hills (on their website) and while I personally don't think I can attest to that (at least until I've tried Komachi) I certainly think they do what they do really well. They've sold Surry Hills (and greater Sydney) on the idea of delicious, well-done Japanese inspired dishes. The flavour of the ramen they create isn't the traditional type of ramen that makes you reminisce about the streets of Tokyo. Instead, they are edgy and dynamic, which in my opinion is more reminiscent of the David Chang/Momofuku Noodle Bar movement. With that in mind, I very much like the direction that the Sydney food scene is going.