Tokyo vegan’s ramen recommendation is extremely off the mark

Tons of veggies doesn’t equal no meat.

As you might guess from his name, Japanese Twitter user Vegan Yasuo (@vegan_yasuo) isn’t into eating animal products. His profile even consists of just a single question: “Have you ever thought about animals’ feelings?”

So when someone told him about a ramen restaurant where you can get your noodles with a ton of veggies, Vegan Yasuo was intrigued, and shared a photo of the dish, which is called “Yasai Mashi Mashi Ramen.”

今日教えてもらった二郎ってラーメン屋は素晴らしいみたいです。 なんと野菜マシマシと言うとビーガンラーメンが出てくるそうです。 お肉のラーメンを出しているのはいただけませんが、多分二郎も本当はそんなことしたくないから、すこしづつ… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

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ヴィーガン🍄やすお (@vegan_yasuo) May 19, 2019

“[The restaurant] serves ramen with meat too, but I think [they]probably don’t really want to, and this is their way of slowly changing the way they do things,” tweeted Vegan Yasuo. However, it turns out he hadn’t quite found vegan paradise in a ramen bowl.

Taking another look at the dish’s name, yasai is the Japanese word for “vegetables,” and mashi, in this case, means “extra.” So the Yasai Mashi Mashi Ramen is really the restaurant’s house ramen with extra-extra-bean sprouts and cabbage. Unfortunately for Vegan Yasuo, though, underneath all those veggies is…

…the ramen of noodle chain Ramen Jiro, some of the most unabashedly heavy, meaty ramen in Japan.

So no, the Yasai Mashi Mashi Ramen is not, by any means, a vegan-friendly meal. One online commenter responded to Vegan Yasuo’s tweet by suggesting that the only way to make the dish vegan would be to eat just the vegetables, but since those, or at least their bottom layer, are floating in Ramen Jiro’s signature tonkotsu (pork stock) ramen, even the cabbage and bean sprouts are marinated in animal-based flavoring.

Luckily for Vegan Yasuo, he seems to have learned the true nature of Ramen Jiro’s Yasai Mashi Mashi Ramen before actually ordering/eating it, and he quickly sent out a follow-up tweet to warn his followers. Still, this is a reminder that while vegetarian ramen isn’t impossible to find, most of the time Japan’s favorite noodle dish is going to be a meaty meal.

Source: Twitter/@vegan_yasuo via Jin
Featured image: Twitter/@vegan_yasuo
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