Ramen and mazemen: the difference is the broth

Ramen looks simple — noodles in soup — but it is an assembled dish. And mazemen, which turns up on more and more menus, is the same bowl minus its most obvious component.

Ramen has four layers

1. The broth. The base. Simmered for hours from chicken, pork, fish or vegetables. The longer and hotter it goes, the more collagen and fat dissolve into it — which is why a tonkotsu is cloudy and rich while a clear chicken broth is not.

2. The tare. The seasoning concentrate that goes into the bottom of the bowl before the broth. This is what the ramen is named after:

• Shio — salt, the lightest and clearest
• Shoyu — soy sauce, savoury and darker
• Miso — fermented bean paste, full and slightly sweet

Broth and tare are often confused. A tonkotsu-shoyu is a pork broth with a soy base; "tonkotsu" describes the broth, "shoyu" the tare.

3. The noodles. Wheat noodles made with kansui, an alkaline mineral water. That gives them their yellow colour, their firm bite and their resistance to going soft immediately. Without kansui you have pasta, not ramen.

4. The toppings. Chashu (rolled, slow-cooked pork belly), ajitama (the egg with the soft yolk), spring onion, nori, bamboo, sweetcorn.

Mazemen is ramen without broth

Maze comes from mazeru, Japanese for mixing. Instead of broth there is a concentrated sauce at the bottom of the bowl. It arrives unmixed, toppings still neatly arranged, and you stir everything together yourself before you start.

That is not a detail, it is the point. With no broth to carry the flavour, the sauce has to do all the work, so it is far more concentrated. And because the noodles are not sitting in liquid they stay firmer — you taste the noodle itself more than you would in a soup bowl.

You will also see it called abura soba ("oil noodles") and mazesoba. The differences between them are small and regional.

Hakata, and why the name matters

Hakata is a district of Fukuoka in southern Japan, and the name mostly stands for a style: thin, straight noodles in a rich pork broth. The association is strong enough that "Hakata" on a menu is usually a clue about the noodle and the broth style, not about where the cook is from.

How to eat it

Slurping is fine. It is not folklore: pulling in air cools the noodle on the way and releases more aroma.

And eating fast is technique, not rudeness. Noodles do not wait — the longer they sit in broth, the softer they get. In Japan a bowl of ramen is a ten-minute dish, not an evening.

We serve both: ramen with broth, and mazemen without. See what is on right now on the menu.