We tried Marugame Udon's first Canadian location and here's what we think

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The concept

Marugame Udon makes everything fresh in store. We snuck our way into the kitchen to get a behind-the-scenes look at the process, and we were blown away.

Walking in, we immediately witnessed chefs coating and dropping tempura right into the deep frier before putting them out for customers to grab.

Think of Marugame as a sort of Udon-themed Ikea cafeteria, where you line up, order whichever main dish you want, and grab your extra pieces of tempura on your way down the line by placing them onto your tray.

Past the deep fryers, we saw soup being ladled into bowls right in front of the customers. We were told the broth takes an hour to cook and is served over freshly made noodles.

If you thought that was a long time to cook broth, then just wait until you hear about the noodle process. Marugame starts by making the noodle dough a day in advance. It’s then stored until the next day when it’s divided into four portions. It is then placed into a machine that presses down the dough.

Our kitchen tour guide explained to us that this dough was traditionally flattened by foot, and more modernly by hand. But don’t worry, you won’t find any footprints in your noodles at Marugame, since the machine does all the work.

After being pressed, the dough is then fed through a machine that flattens the dough into sheets. Finally, it is cut up into noodles and boiled. The noodles are pulled by a stick around the water in a specific way keeping them long and straight, otherwise, they would curl up during the cooking process.

There were at least twenty people in the kitchen at once, each focused on one aspect of the udon and working together to make each dish. Despite being open for only a couple of days so far, the kitchen ran like a well-oiled machine.

The food

Now we’ll get right to the chase. We tried three different bowls from Marugame: the chicken katsu udon, beef kake udon, and nikutama udon. As expected, all three were delicious, but we did have a favourite.

If you’ve ever had Japanese curry before then you’ll know what to expect from chicken Katsu udon. Marugame’s udon noodles are served in a bowl of this thick curry sauce and all topped with a crispy chicken Katsu. You can’t go wrong with this choice.

The beef kake is served up in a light dashi broth that, just like the noodles, is made fresh in-house. It’s topped with a good portion of sweet and savoury beef and was a light and enjoyable option when paired with the tempura offered.

But our favourite was the nikutama udon, which is Marugame best selling udon globally. It’s topped with that same sweet and savoury beef, BK sauce, and a soft poached egg. You get this really rich flavour when you break open the yolk and mix it into the broth. Everything about it was fantastic which is why it took the crown as our favourite.

But we need to take a moment to appreciate the fresh and crispy tempura. From pumpkin croquette to kakiage (fritter made with onions, carrots, green beans, and mushrooms held together by tempura batter), everything was piping hot and delicious. During our visit, we were told tempura and udon are a perfect pairing in Sanuki style.

Marugame Udon is open from 11 am to 9 pm seven days a week. Are you going to check this new udon shop out? Let us know in the comments.

Marugame Udon

Address:  589 Beatty Street, Vancouver

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