Mirakutei: Traditional Japanese Goodness

Last week Wifey and I got a hankering for some good Japanese ramen and tried out two different places. The first one was Mirakutei (the link is to Facebook, because their other page is devoid of info), a small shop on East Burnside, near Burnside Brewing and Le Pigeon. It's housed in a newer building and run by the same man (Hiroshi) who ran Hiroshi's, a sushi spot in Northwest. Both places were running for awhile, but Hiroshi's recently was closed and Hiroshi now does sushi (only for dinner) at Mirakutei. 

The lunch menu offers a choice of two different bentos, a few different ramens, and some small plates. We started off with some fried rice. 

This was, in short, perfectly traditional (as far as fried rice goes, which no, is not a Japanese dish) and perfectly tasty. And cooked perfectly. Great flavors, good size of veggies, and everything worked. Wifey says it might be the best she's ever had. 

Next up, the gyoza - we always have to get gyoza.

As you can see the gyoza had a nice crunch on the outside, but still were soft. The onion and pork ratio also was spot on. And that sauce? Normally I don't really care for gyoza sauce, but this one I could drink it was so good. No idea if it's housemade, but it's damn good.

Wifey ordered the tonkatsu and salmon bento, which also came with a side of rice, some tempura veggies and a tempura shrimp.

The pork tonkatsu also was cooked just right. Crunchy, but still moist and still recognizable as pork. We had a bad experience with a restaurant's tonkatsu a couple weeks back and this buried that memory. The tempura was nice, not overly battered and still preserving the flavors of each vegetable. The salmon...well, it was just okay. There was something in the flavor I wasn't a fan of, something that made me thing it wasn't the greatest quality fish. Hiroshi's was known for it's high quality fish, so I don't know what the deal was...or maybe I'm just spoiled from Copper River salmon fillets. Shrug.

The last dish we ordered was the Genki Ramen, which is a white miso base with scrambled egg, shredded pork, and topped with bean sprouts.

Absolutely fantastic. The broth was rich and full of flavor, garlic and pepper adding depth and a kick, the egg and pork adding just the right amount of goodness, and even the bean sprouts - which I don't normally eat - seemed to just fit with their added crunch. The noodles were also perfectly cooked.

And you know what else? We got there when it opened at 11:30 and despite ordering and eating our way through four dishes, only one other customer showed up. I'm not sure if it's the location isn't conducive to a lunchtime spot on the weekday or what, but we had the place to ourselves.

We both highly, highly recommend Mirakutei and we absolutely will return. Next time we may have to go for dinner to try out Hiroshi's legendary sushi to go with the ramen. And fried rice. And gyoza. Might have to skip lunch that day.