December 17, 2021 Food & Drink » Restaurants
In many ways, Yamamoto’s upbringing groomed her to enter the food world. At home, her mother was an avid cook and her father a well-traveled gourmand. “As a kid we had roles,” she says. “We were always assisting, getting ready to learn serious cooking. By the time I was 12, I was able to handle many things. It was really a kinship, family-based learning, dojo kind of thing.” When the extended family would gather for Buddhist holidays or rites of passage, everyone would cook together.
As the daughter of a well-connected and amiable businessman, Yamamoto grew up going to restaurants regularly, and even being given the rare privilege of sitting at the bar with the adults. Her and her father’s favorite in Hiroshima was the upscale Hassun. “Once we went there three days in a row while my mom was visiting her family,” she recalls with a giggle.
Hassun was a Kappo-style restaurant, where the multi-course meal is seasonal and decided entirely by the chef. In an era when children didn’t speak unless spoken to, Yamamoto did a lot of watching and listening. “They talked about all the ingredients—the fish, what time it was harvested, what days of the month it was supposed to have eggs in it, what dish they could make if they got three of them,” she explains. Eventually the chefs started involving her in the conversation. “That was the beginning of my whole career,” Yamamoto says. “Everyone loved me because I understood what they were trying to do, what their resources were, and what to expect for the season.”
Still, Yamamoto didn’t go the food route at first, instead moving to New York to study graphic design. It was only after she lost her biggest design client to 9/11 that Yamamoto got a side job teaching cooking classes at the Park Slope Food Co-op. Classes gave way to catering gigs and private events. Several years after Yamamoto and her husband Kazuma Oshita moved to Gardiner, she decided to open a restaurant.
Gomen-Kudasai served up a massive menu of scratch-made Japanese dishes with a focus on organic, local, farm-fresh, and gluten-free ingredients, including more than 80 vegan options. The spot was a hidden gem and a favorite of those in the know. “It was medicine-level food, and very reasonable for what it was. It was hard to find that anywhere,” Yamamoto says. “Many people came from Manhattan just to eat with us.” They tried enticing customers with Japanese movie nights, live music, events, and classes. Ultimately, though, in a college town thronged with 20-somethings looking for a cheap slice of pizza, the business was not sustainable. And in 2018, after 10 years, Gomen closed in March 2018.
You would think that after the 16-hour days and the debt they took on Yamamoto and Oshita would’ve tucked tail and run far, far away from the food industry. Instead, only a few months later in July 2018, they signed a lease for a space on the corner of Broadway and Cedar Street in Kingston for their next restaurant. It had been an insurance brokerage, then a political campaign office. “This was before the RUPCO building. The old bowling alley was still there and there were drug dealers on the street, but I smelled something,” she says. “I liked the spot—on a corner with big windows.”
There was no kitchen. The 1,200-square foot space was just a big open room. “My background isn't as a restaurant owner. If it was, I wouldn't have touched this,” Yamamoto says with a good-natured laugh. “My background is as a designer. My husband is a sculptor. We didn’t think of anything but creation.”
Over the next three and half years, Yamamoto and Oshita lived a start-up roller coaster—funds from an angel investor, permitting nightmares, a Kickstarter campaign, a pandemic, and always the rent check due. Just when they were about to throw in the towel at the end of 2020, another 11th-hour investor swept in and gave them the money to hang on. So when Tanma Ramen finally opened this fall, it was a triumph against the odds.
Still, amid surging COVID cases, staff onboarding, supply chain shortages, and an abundance of caution, Yamamoto is not shouting her arrival from the rooftops. With papered-over windows, no signage, and no grand announcements, Tanma is serving up serious speakeasy vibes alongside the handmade gyoza and steaming bowls of ramen.
“We officially, secretly opened in October,” Yamamoto says with a laugh. “I don’t want to rush. This seems pretty simple, but it’s very complicated. It’s a ridiculous amount of work to achieve that flavor.” In addition to getting the kitchen up and running smoothly, Yamamoto is worried about COVID in her small space. Tanma is currently only open by reservation, so that she can stagger the customers and space out the groups.
Yamamoto and Oshita designed the interior to have two discrete spaces. On the Broadway side, a long, brightly lit counter with seven stools will operate as a traditional ramen bar—a high turn-over spot for where office workers can pop in for a quick lunchtime bowl of ramen and an order of gyoza. On the Cedar Street side, a dimly lit tavern area offers a more sultry ambiance with a full selection of sakes, spirits, and beer, plus a full menu of appetizers in addition to the signature ramen. Currently, though, both sides are being used to space out dinner groups.
Like at Gomen-Kudasai, Yamamoto is preparing everything from scratch, though Tanma’s menu is a fraction of the size. Kick your meal off with pan-fried gyoza—a Manchurian recipe from Yamamoto’s father that has ginger, garlic, chives, cabbage, scallions, and, in the non-vegan version, pork ($9). Four dumplings are dished up in a sizzling cast iron pan with a simple dipping sauce of organic soy sauce and grain vinegar with a drop of heat. Or in winter get the sui gyoza—dumplings cooked in soup, either vegan or non ($7).
The avocado sashimi is elegantly simple and delightful, drizzled with bright lemon juice and dipped in wasabi soy sauce ($8)—it’s the type of dish that makes you wonder if you’ve been going about avocado all wrong. The hiyayakko is a chilled tofu dish ($8). Each cube of organic silken tofu is a creamy canvas for the toppings of grated ginger, garlic, and bonito flakes.
For ramen, Yamamoto keeps it simple with just two options (both $15): miso, which uses a broth made of chicken and pork bones, served with sliced pork belly; and shio, with a vegan broth made from kombu, shitake, and other vegetables. Both are served with mung bean sprouts, chopped scallion, bamboo shoots, cashews, and wakame seaweed. If you’ve loaded up on apps, opt for the baby bar size of either for just $10. You might notice the absence of nori, eggs, or other ingredients that have become familiar to ramen eaters. Yamamoto’s focus on simplicity is deliberate. “To me, it’s very gimmicky just to add, add, add,” she says. “All the extras came up in the ’80s—it’s a remnant from instant noodles.”
For the miso broth, Yamamoto sources her organic pastured pork and chicken bones and the pork belly for the house-made chashu from Essex Farm in Lake Champlain, which was founded by local farming legend Dan Guenther and is carried on by his family. The broth is cooked for hours to unlock the collagen in the bones, along with ginger, garlic, the tops of scallions, and leeks.
“People think this is fast food but it’s not,” says Yamamoto. “Behind me is so much experience—I’m deriving everything good from my taste experience and that all goes into the noodle soup. These are carefully raised pigs and chickens. The bones come here and become bone broth. I want everyone to understand the whole cycle, the effort and work. It’s a precious food.”
Yamamoto is staying away from fish courses to avoid competing with next-door neighbor Yasuda. She’s working on some more dishes like tempura and a marinated fried chicken called tatsuta-age, in addition to a catering menu for whole-restaurant buyouts. When the warm weather returns, expect to see more vegetable dishes popping up, plus an outdoor patio.
In the meantime, Yamamoto will continue her labor of love behind papered windows, slowly opening to the public at a rate her staff—and the supply chain—can handle. “I love to feed. I want to share how wonderful my experience with food was,” she says. She feels buoyed by a recent couple’s rave reviews. “They were so excited. I was very happy to see them just eating my food, full of joy,” she says. “That is the moment I feel like it’s worth doing.”
A post shared by Youko Yamamoto (@oishiinoodle)
By Brian K. Mahoney Nov 24, 2008
Arielle flatiron gomen kudasai restaurants
Tags: Restaurants, gomen kudasai, tanma ramen, youko yamamoto, japanese restaurant, ramen bar, noodle shop, Web Only
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