A Ramen Master With Shops in Tokyo and Kanagawa Opens Cafe Ogawa in Ascot Vale

For his latest project, Cafe Ogawa in Ascot Vale, Kantaro Okada, the serial operator behind 279, Le Bajo, Atsu, Hareruya Pantry and more has teamed up with Atsushi Ogawa, a Japanese ramen veteran. Ogawa has 16 ramen shops in Tokyo and Kanagawa, the first of which opened in 1995, each specialising in either iekei-style ramen, tonkotsu ramen, tachibana ramen or Ogawa-ryu ramen.

Okada and Ogawa were introduced by a mutual friend about a year and a half ago and first teamed up professionally last February, with a pop-up above Hareruya Pantry in what’s now the Atsu space. They served both iekei and tonkotsu ramen and then asked customers to vote on which they thought was best. The idea was to then open a ramen shop focused on serving the winning bowl. But the vote was tied. “It was almost exactly 50-50,” Okada says.

As a result, Ascot Vale’s Cafe Ogawa is the only one of Ogawa’s venues to serve both his signature styles. For Melbourne diners, the tonkotsu ramen will likely be more familiar than the iekei, a style from Yokohama that’s built on pork broth layered with fish, soy seasoning and chicken oil, topped with chashu pork, spinach and nori. 

Ogawa’s recipe development has always been about steady refinement. “It wasn’t like a magical beginning,” he says, via a translator. “It was something that kept getting better over the years.” Today, that recipe is considered complete, with only small adjustments made to accommodate Australian ingredients. The team found that the pork here, for example, is fattier and less intense in flavour than pork in Japan. Exported dried fish and wakame are different to what you can get in Japan – even Australian water makes a difference to the broth, he says.

Both bowls use noodles produced at Ogawa’s factory in Japan and shipped to Melbourne. Diners can choose between hosomen (thin wheat noodles) and futomen, which are thicker and have a higher egg content. Traditionally, once the noodles in an iekei-style ramen are gone, a small bowl of rice is added to the remaining broth. At Cafe Ogawa, you can order a bowl of rice and follow the same ritual.

The chashu pork topping both bowls of ramen is cooked using a tsugitashi method, meaning it’s braised in a soy-based master stock that's continually built upon as each batch of pork is made. The stock and the pork both absorb and add flavour over time. At Cafe Ogawa, the team uses a 15-year-old stock base that Ogawa brought to Melbourne from Japan.

Ogawa is based in Japan, but was in Melbourne for two months, working directly with the local kitchen team to establish consistency. He remains a consultant and plans to return every two to three months to avoid any drops in quality. 

In addition to ramen, there’s gyoza, karaage and salmon sashimi. Cafe Ogawa also functions as a cafe, which is atypical of ramen shops but very typical of Okada’s venues. Coffee service runs alongside the kitchen and dessert plays a bigger role than usual. If you’re not up to polishing off a whole bowl of ramen, stop in for a slice of just-set Basque cheesecake or vanilla chiffon cake, with the option to add a scoop of Hareruya ice-cream, of course. Then sit back and enjoy the cafe’s collection of city pop and jazz records.

Cafe Ogawa
217 Union Road, Ascot Vale
No phone

Hours:
Mon & Tue 5pm–9pm
Wed to Sat 11am–2.30pm; 5pm–9pm

@cafeogawa