A line outside a restaurant doesn’t necessarily indicate the value of what’s being served inside. I kept this in mind as I stood in the turgid human formation outside of Okiboru--a tsukemen shop on Orchard Street, LES—trying to dispel any unjust impressions which might be lent to me by the fact. The same went for the expectations a Michelin rating seems to stress. A review begins on a blank page and I felt my experience should as well. 

Any discussion of tsukemen is, first, a discussion a ramen.

Along with knowledge of the sutra, Buddhist priests,  returning to Japan from China long ago, brought noodle knowhow. Yet ramen, which appeared in its primitive 12th century form as buckwheat soba, has since become, next to sushi and sake, emblematic of Japanese cultural cuisine. Tsukemen, on the other chopstick, was conceived 1955 in Tokyo—not by a priest, but apparently, by a god.

The man behind tsukemen, (the tsuke-man, if you will) was Kazuo Yamagishi, the “god of ramen” (with a documentary of his life released under that title). What Mr. Yamagishi called mori soba (“heaped” or “piled noodles”) was first served out of his Tokyo restaurant, Taishoken.

Men, as you may have discerned, means "noodle". In the ra version (ra here meaning “pulled”) the men are already immersed in one’s bowl. In the tsuke variation they are served aside and cold, to be dipped into a concentrated broth while eating (hence tsukemen, “dipping noodles”). The variation may appear, at first, an uncontroversial one, but the effect, in the ensuing decades, was sensational, as I discovered.

That extra step, having to work for your food is certainly part of the fun; it contributes to the curious popularity of a dish that bevies of devoted people will readily stand outside waiting for. Hungry or sated, I personally cannot conceive of such zen on any line. "Hangry", 8it reader? I get Hexplosive. And not just that. I get Hantsy. Hanxious. And, when kept waiting for a meal or drink (especially the latter), I am near Hout of control. 

When seated, the waitress at Okiboru will indeed ask you, in no mocking manner, if you know how the dish is supposed to be eaten, and will explain if you do not.

It may sound like a simple matter. Use your chopsticks to pincer up some noodles. Deliver your noodles in a crane-like motion to the broth bowl, submerge, then emerge, and slurp up. Use your spoon for backup drip defense.

With a stereotypical Western gaucheness, some doubtless offenses to Japanese national pride, and some possible offenses to ancestral deities, which I cannot say I am proud to print, I fumbled at each step in this ostensibly painless delivery. It is only commendable how much face I lost, while managing to get so much tsukemen on it.

Oh papi, umami: The agreeable alliance of these two elementally different ingredients (cold/hot; fresh/savory; firm/soupy) is why you will find, between the hours of 12-3PM, and then again from 5-8:30PM, a devoted assemblage waiting outside of Okiboru’s noren-curtained doors.

This is how it went down, and in every other direction:

Regrettably, foreign “street food” that gets discovered and imported tends to undergo a rapid economic evolutionary process under its new conditions. Low brow fare becomes a highbrow fad. Nosh becomes posh; meek becomes chic, and quite inauthentically pricey.

(Those who find themselves at all disoriented may venture into Russ & Daughters Cafe next door, as I afterward did, for some assuringly familiar, homey, and local East European-imported, expensive immigrant fare.)

I have not had the excellent fortune to visit Japan, so I can’t speak in comparative terms.  I can vouch only for the taste, not authenticity, of Okiboru’s tsukemen. Yet in a world which places too much sacred value on “authenticity”, without asking whether a dish can be inauthentically better than it is authentically good, taste ought to be good enough. In this case I believe it is, without believing so much as to want to wait on line again to reaffirm my faith. However, the line outside is -literally- a standing testament to Okiboru’s committed faithful, if you take that as any sort of token.

It seems that to reach the Far East, you need only go so far as the Lower East Side. Just bring a pocketful of yen, and another of zen.

About the writer: Originally from the East Coast (NJ), Haim Shweky has written from the Mideast (Israel), Southeast Asia (Vietnam), and Eastern Europe (Ukraine). In this article, he returns stateside to write about the Lower East Side, right here in New York.