It's not fancy.
It's a super-casual, weirdly-shaped restaurant with two small dining rooms. One has an open kitchen with a small dining counter; the other has more tables, plus, near the reception area, a narrow counter that faces a black wall.
The menu is printed on two pieces of stapled paper; the type is so small, the ink so faint, good luck reading it without your phone's flashlight or a magnifying glass. And the music: Is that Arabic music playing in a ... ramen joint?
Yes, it 's Arabic, and it's rock, and it's hip hop. The unpredicted, atypical, idiosyncratic music playing at newly opened 7 Doors Down Ramen Co. in Bloomfield is as quirky and crazy and remarkable as the food it is serving. Food that is difficult to ignore, impossible to forget if, that is, you like your food full of bold flavor, packed with brightness and verve and, down-to-earth yet — yes! — different.
The black-clad chefs, decked with baseball caps worn backwards, aren't using tweezers and decorating brushes to dazzle their diners. What executive chef and co-owner Lawrence Talis, head chef Luis Blasini and sous chef Bill Sanders are doing is taking dishes, mostly common dishes — heard of ramen? salmon burger? what about sesame noodles? — and giving them a fresh, ingenious, madcap twist that defies easy categorization. The salmon, the ramen, the sesame noodles might look like all those you may have had before, but don't be fooled. They're not. The chefs are dabbling in Nikkei cuisine, an enchanting melding of the culinary traditions of Peru and Japan.
Not familiar with it? Not to worry (though if you've had ceviche, you've eaten Nikkei). The kitchen isn't interested in toeing strict culinary lines. It is more interested in challenging, changing, building on them. Its name alone — 7 Doors Down Ramen Co. — is a clue.
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Yes, it's seven doors down from Blue Steel Pizza Co., the other restaurant Talis and his business partner Brian Costello own. But a ramen restaurant? "We never intended to open a ramen restaurant," Talis says. Heck, he had never made ramen before. "None of us had," he says.
And while they do now and darn well, too — the duck ramen, a hearty bowl of luxuriously thick broth specked with shreds of silky duck confit and sweet Jersey corn kernels, is a flavor extravaganza — ramen serves as an enticement, albeit a truly delicious one, for the restaurant. "People come for the ramen," Talis says. "They really like the ramen, they like the space, they may try the other dishes."
And they may be gobsmacked, in a can't-believe-my-good-luck way. I was, so much so that I had to text another food lover mid-meal just to share my elation. Some things are just too good to keep to yourself.
Take the cold sesame noodles. Instead of the usual peanut butter, these thin strands are laced with creamy tahini that sport tangy house-made kimchi and funky umami miso. They are combined with chunks of crisp cucumbers that are then sprinkled with spicy chili oil and sweet toasted coconut. The dish hits every basic flavor; it's kind of terrific.
Or take the coconut shrimp bao buns, little parcels of slightly sweet steamed buns schmeared with spicy mayo and overflowing with panko-coated fried shrimp and ribbons of cured, bright red cabbage. Really good! Or the tuna sashimi, a heady raw fish dish that, in keeping with the restaurant's break-the-mold spirit, isn't based in soy and ginger, but instead the Peruvian citrus-y marinade called leche de tigre, and dressed with small cubes of sweet pineapple, tart orange gooseberries and ribbons of finely sliced scallions. It's as beautiful as it is delicious.
Lomo saltado, that Peruvian steak mainstay, was perfectly cooked, though the temperature wasn't warm enough. No problem, however, with its flavor profile: tender bites of top sirloin underneath a mélange of sweet charred red onions, juicy cherry tomatoes, and properly soggy buttery fries, all bathed in a rich demi glace that you'd be wise to soak up with every bit of food you place on your fork.
As for dessert, the dairy-free chocolate olive oil cake with chocolate shavings could have used, ahem, real milk. It lacked a certain rich creaminess.
But the strawberries and pisco? Let's just say it's my new favorite dessert. A play on that Italian classic, zabaglione. That's right, an Italian dessert in a ramen/Nikkei restaurant. So, in line with the restaurant's rule-defying stance, it swaps Peruvian pisco for Italian marsala in its custard, lays its over a bed of fresh strawberries, tops it all with thin chips of meringue and sprinkles it with black sesame seeds.
Say what you will, but a restaurant willing to take chances, to break rules, to challenge expectations is a restaurant that reaps old-fashioned rewards: loyal customers.
Go: 271-273 Glenwood Ave, Bloomfield; 856-543-9480, 7doorsdown.com.
