When I was a university student in Tokyo, one day after classes, I suddenly got inspired to eat ramen. There was a ramen restaurant near the campus that I’d always been curious about. I decided to go there for my late lunch.
The restaurant was very dark, unlike typical ramen places. It was the odd hour between lunch and dinner, and I was the only customer. When I took a seat, a staff handed me a menu over the counter, and since it was my first visit, I picked the restaurant’s signature ramen.
After a long wait, a large bowl of ramen was handed to me over the counter. The place was so dark I could barely see the content, but it smelled nice. When I took the first scoop of the noodles the taste was amazing. The style of this ramen was different from any other I’d had before.
I’m so happy I came here today!
Delighted, I scooped up the dark shimmering soup with my spoon. The moment I took a sip, however, a strange flavour filled my mouth. I immediately scanned the soup to see what it was that got into my mouth. But the room was so dark I couldn’t see anything.
It must have been a mistake.
I moved on to take another scoop of the noodles. As I chewed on them, however, that strange flavour filled my mouth again.
Yikes!
I coughed to clear the unpleasant flavour from my mouth, then stirred the soup to find the source. As I stirred with my chopsticks, tiny leaves stuck to them. In fact, the soup was filled with the leaves.
Yikes!
There was no way I could remove all of them. But that didn’t stop me from trying. I spent the rest of my time frantically separating the green leaves from the noodles.
Later I learned that the leaves were called cilantro. Because of the rather shocking introduction, cilantro became my least favourite herb, and it would take many years before I finally accepting cilantro into my dish.