Review: Biwa

Wet and windblown, I walked into Biwa last night feeling like I'd been up drinking scotch in a tribal casino till 5am (because I had), and I knew that a big hot bowl of real-deal ramen would cure me in a hurry. Just two days earlier I'd gone in with a couple friends, one of which had lived in Tokyo for a time and knew the secret glories of ramen - Japan's pizza/hamburger in one. Ramen has infinite variations, but like pizza's crust and sauce, two ingredients are key - noodles and broth. The noodles must have the perfect chew and the broth has to be deep and rich while often staying mysteriously light, all the other ingredients (think toppings) don't matter if the foundation sucks (eg Pizza Hut).

The place was packed for a Wednesday at 9:30, but I found a single perch at the end of the bar, wiped myself down with a hot towel and got to business. Happy hour (at the bar only) begins at 9pm, 7 days a week, and features cheap $5 6oz takkori's of sake in addition to discounted shochu and beer, but what really gets me worked up are the deals on food. Meats (and garlic!) grilled on sticks are only $2 a pop, and they're damn generous - look at what they consider $2 worth of pork belly:

Will I ever be able to walk in here and not order this? I always make time for my good friend pork belly as you well know by now. He was intensely rich both times I came in: the first time a bit more subdued, soft and perfectly porky, the second time was a bacon-y punch in the face with the flavor of the overly crisp stuff from last night's casino-BLT - a bit too heavy on the salt really and very different from the first experience, so your mileage may vary. The hangar steak (no photo available at press time) had a nice texture, but lacked the flavor I would have expected - I think I'm spoiled by Tanuki's kimchi marinated onglet. I'm not sure how they managed to make chicken breast so interesting, but they did. I can only imagine the thighs, hearts, and liver are even better.

Other small snacks abound including the onigiri (shown at the top) with salted plum. Isaac explained this as the Japanese PBJ - doesn't need refrigeration, easy to pack, a good balance of sweet/salt/sour and a nice belly filler for $1. The gyoza were really nice too, and packed the salty char that seemed to lace everything here; the texture was soft and chewy, the filling rich, and they came to the bar piping hot. But last night I enjoyed my favorite small plate here so far - asparagus with a zesty miso sauce and crumbled egg:

The first bite came as surprise - "WTF this is cold?" - but it was a great balance of flavors. Spicy rich miso with a zesty/sour twang followed by the richness of the egg and the bitterness of the perfectly blanched asparagus. I would have eaten five plates of this, but that could have been my hangover talking.

Alas comes the main event- the ramen arrives - specifically the chicken ramen. Biwa offers two ramen choices - one based on a chicken stock and one based on a shoyu-pork-onion base. Chicken stock has always cradled the cold, wet, and broken so it seemed the obvious choice that night. You can add a host of goodies to the bowl, but I just went with egg:

It's hard to emphasize the size of this bowl, but use the egg for comparison, I could only fit two of these on my dish rack and even that would be pushing it. The noodles were perfectly chewy this time, if you've only had ghetto dehydrated ramen in a cup you'll be taken aback by the initial experience of what ramen is supposed to be - it again begs the comparison to experiencing that first chewy charred crust of a real pizza. The broth was pure chicken nectar, I imagine a chicken drowned in the sea before slaughter, but there was supposedly no seaweed or bonito involved. When I asked my server about this fishy flavor she admitted to her own suspicions regarding sea goodies as well, but stated there were actually none to be found. Although the soup was fairly monosyllabic, it was a great single tone of chicken varied only by the green onion - exactly what I needed in that moment.

Oh, and the egg, the yolk was somehow very gooey while still staying in the egg it belongs to, I'm sure it's simple but I'd love to know the method for this as I really enjoyed the texture.

I was more impressed with the ramen I enjoyed just a couple nights before - the signature 'Biwa' shoyu style ramen - with a base of soy, pork, and onion:

The Biwa ramen pictured above is rocking the works - egg, wakame, and pork - a true meal in a bowl. Porktastic sweet fatty richness melds into bitter burnt sour onion flavors and finishes with salty seaweed ocean notes. Bitter flavors almost make the ramen broth a bit tannic, like a strong black tea was steeped in there, but I'm guessing that's just the onion. Somehow the egg was a bit richer and seemed somewhat smoked this go around and nearly stole the show - but strange it would be so different from the egg in my chicken ramen...was this on purpose or inconsistency? The noodles were a bit softer this first time too, but I loved this bowl of carb laden doom anyway.

So does Biwa deserve the exchange of your hard earned dollars for it's attempt at hedonistic pleasure? Yes, I think it does, the caveats being when you go and where you sit. Ramen bowls are a reasonable $5 during happy hour, but $9 (!) anytime before 9pm and even then only at the bar - which can be crowded even on weekday evenings. Start adding toppings - egg $1, wakame $2 (really?) - pork $4 and your bowl can hit $16 easily, which can be tough to swallow for a bowl of ramen, even if it is a good one. The best values are the meat sticks and onigiri with which you could make a small but satisfying booze-sopping meal for ~$7.

There's unfortunately no way I can wrap this up without pitting the two izakaya's from opposite sides of the river against each other - it's Tanuki vs Biwa throwdown time! Biwa strikes me as a great late night meat-snack and ramen joint, while Tanuki rules the creative and dazzling side of the Japanese tracks. The catch here is that Tanuki offers a lot of the same goods at cheap prices as well - cheap stuff on sticks and $5 bowls of ramen with all the fixin's (only on Thursday's), but it's hard for me to order that stuff when a $20 omakase will throw you down a gauntlet of new mind altering creations. I promise to someday try the ramen on a Thursday and report back though (the things I do for you). Of course izakaya's are bars as well, and Tanuki seems to have a more intelligible and affordable sake menu.

Brass tacks: looking for an in depth and mind bending izakaya food experience - Tanuki. Catching a show on Burnside and need some affordable grilled meats and ramen - Biwa.

Biwa

215 SE 9th Ave, Portland, OR 97214

portlandfood.org discussion

Comments

[SauceSupreme]

There are many things that Biwa just inherently does better than Tanuki or Yuzu, and we're lucky to live in a city where our Big Three Izakayas are kinda mutually exclusive.

In addition to ramen, Biwa's strength is in its yakitori items, to which I'm also including the yakionigiri. I'm not as big a fan of their karaage as ExtraMSG (though I do like the curry in the breading), but it's still pretty solid.

[Tim Don]

Yeah, I'd love to spend some more time with Biwa.

I sampled quite a bit of the yakitori and really enjoyed it, aside from the radical differences in the pork belly across visits.

Get ahold of me if ya wanna introduce me to your favorites :)

[ConOat]

there are exactly two things Biwa does better than Tanuki. First is Yakitori, although its a bit of an unfair comparison as Tanuki is with out a real grill. The other thing Biwa does better is profit on their Sake. The markup is a bit ridiculous, and you cant buy a bottle(unless you just pay 6x the tokkuri price.....but thats defeating the point of wanting a whole bottle).

[Tim Don]

Haha, yeah, the sake list doesn't seem as approachable to me as Tanuki where even pricey pours feel fair. I instead feel kinda hustled at Biwa.

The Yakitori IS great at Biwa (recently had the liver there and especially enjoyed it, and always the pork belly), but I think Tanuki does a damn fine job considering the lack of a fancy charcoal grill. In fact I still prefer the beef onglet at Tanuki after multiple samplings at both joints. Might just be the kimchi manipulating my senses though.