BON Fresh Ramen & Soba, Prague: Ramen with Fresh Noodles in Anděl
A red banner hangs above the tables, promising "homemade noodles" in Japanese. Around it, walls of corrugated iron, strings of paper lanterns, tables built on bolted-together bottle crates and walls papered with clippings from newspapers and manga magazines. If Anděl weren't right outside the window, you'd easily believe you were standing in a narrow Japanese alley where people eat dinner standing up, coats still on.
The setting belongs to BON Fresh Ramen & Soba, a Prague place that does nothing but ramen and soba noodles - and both the banner and the word fresh in the name mean it: the noodles are made here by hand, every single day.
From a Former Gambling Hall to Three Prague Addresses
BON was opened in February 2019 by Dan Nguyen, a Prague native from a Vietnamese family - and he opened it in a former gambling hall near náměstí Míru. He came to food from an office job, first in a bank and then at an IT company, and he fell for ramen during a language course in the USA: he and his girlfriend fell for it so hard that they signed up for cooking classes. She trained as a designer, and she was the one who later designed the Japanese alley from the first paragraph. In 2021 he opened branches in Letná and Anděl, and the original place eventually moved to Vinohrady, so today BON cooks at three addresses. Several branches of one ramen brand in a single city is standard practice in Japan anyway - the Ramen Jiro chain has more than thirty in Tokyo alone. And Prague is keeping up: I've already written here about Isai Ramen and Takumi.
Tonkotsu and Tantanmen: Two Soups, Two Family Trees
Tonkotsu ramen was born in December 1937 at a street stall in the town of Kurume on Kyushu, the southern Japanese island, and its trademark - a milky white, thick broth of pork bones - supposedly came out of a mistake: a cook left the pot on the fire longer and hotter than he should have, the broth turned cloudy - and the slip became a style. Tonkotsu broth is simmered for eight to eighteen hours these days - longer than a shift of the cook who watches it.
Tantanmen, by contrast, is an immigrant. It grew out of the Sichuan noodles dan dan mian, named after the carrying pole that street vendors used to balance them on, and it was the Sichuan chef Chen Kenmin who took it to Japan: he dialed back the heat, added sesame paste and, most of all, broth. The Chinese original is little more than dry noodles; the Japanese tantanmen is a soup in its own right. The dark drops on its surface come from mayu, garlic oil scorched until black, which adds a smoky, faintly bitter undertone.
Karaage, Mochi and a Citrus with a Wild Parent
Japanese cooking makes no secret of where it comes from, and chicken karaage admits it right in its name: the word means, literally, "frying the Chinese way". They are marinated pieces of meat coated in a mix of flour and starch and fried until golden. The whole menu is just as candid, really - even ramen came out of the Chinese pulled noodles lamian in the 19th century. Today karaage is a classic of Japanese izakaya bars and takeaway windows; at BON it arrives as a starter with seasoned mayonnaise.
Mochi is a dessert made of sticky rice that is steamed and pounded until it turns into a smooth, springy dough; it gets filled with anything from sweet pastes to ice cream. Yuzu is usually described as a cross between a mandarin and a lemon - except the lemon has nothing to do with it: the second parent is the Ichang papeda, a wild citrus that is practically never eaten raw. What counts is the fragrant peel and the juice, and that juice is why Michelin chefs have fallen for yuzu too. And if you take a liking to mochi, you can buy it in Asian grocery stores as well, for instance at Tamda Foods in Prague's Sapa (where to go in Prague for Asian groceries).
Six Dishes in Anděl
The chicken karaage at 135 CZK (5.40 EUR) was tender and juicy and the seasoned mayonnaise went well with it. I had the tonkotsu ramen at 239 CZK (9.60 EUR) on the staff's advice - wheat noodles, slices of pork, a soft-boiled egg, bean sprouts, corn, spring onion and sesame - and they knew what they were recommending. The tantanmen, at the same 239 CZK (9.60 EUR), lived up to its name as a spicy soup. The mochi with matcha at 69 CZK (2.80 EUR) was superb and the sesame one, at the same price, was dangerously close behind; I washed it all down with yuzu lemonade at 89 CZK (3.60 EUR). The whole Japanese evening came to 840 CZK (34 EUR). You sit on backless plastic stools that don't invite you to linger - but comfort isn't the point here. I'd happily take that stool again.
BON Fresh Ramen & Soba
