an exhausting day: a one hour flight that felt three times longer, a train ride the same length, and not a crumb to eat. this was all on top of having not slept nearly long enough to recover from how hard i had worked the day before. and so i ended up shambling the darkened streets looking for somewhere to dine.

i soon stumbled upon someplace still open, beaming soft beckoning light to the sidewalk. it looked brand new, it certainly hadn't been around last time i had been around these parts. it was KYURAMEN. idly i thought about how phantom places of respite waylaying wearly lost travelers is an extremely common theme in fairy tales and a few goosebumps books. the nature of the establishment recalled to me miyazawa kenji's tale the restaurant of many orders (注文の多い料理店) in particular. but i went in anyway.

the entire was very chic, heavily japanese-inspired. wood slats, red lanterns, paper screens, and one wall covered in those small wooden cards with stuff written on them that you see at shrines. the vaguely-asian but certainly not japanese host led me into a private booth sealed off with a curtain door and paper walls. they were already going quite hard with their interior design alone.

the real confusion began when i started to inspect the menu, a rather thick, spiral-bound affair. the first five or so pages were dedicated to a hagiography of the restaurant's food, as if i still needed more convincing to actually eat something in the restaurant after being seated and opening the menu. i didn't read the text very closely but i did notice it had a stilting quality, like it had been written by a foreigner. mostly this came through in the word choice and awkward commas placed like, this. curiously, they had very little to say about the restaurants origins, which is the one thing i really wanted to know. there was only a vague paragraph referencing "The Founder" as if he was a mythical figure or a cult leader. the only thing i gleaned was that he was not japanese, since he reportedly visited japan many times to "study ramen".

the next pages, as one might expect, exhibited the ramen offerings. they did so rather gratuitously, taking up a full two page spread just for three menu items. the ramen itself wasn't unusual, but then i noticed you could upgrade any of them to a "combo" including a pork bao bun and thai ice tea. excuse me? then, on the next page, i saw it: the KYUBURGER. to go between two disc-shaped buns made from rice, you could choose from a variety of exotic meats (teriyaki beef, pork belly, soft-shell crab, eel). to drink? thai ice tea, of course. and on the side? obviously salt and pepper crispy corn... wait WHAT???

i was absolutely flabbergasted. where had i stumbled into? in any case what i had to do was obvious: i had to get a kyuburger. i pressed the button to summon the waiter for my order. did i forget to mention that? they had a button on the wall for calling the waiters. i had seen it a few times in japan but i had yet to see anywhere courageous enough to deploy it stateside, even in aggressively japanese restaurants. a waiter appeared almost instantly and took my order of a pork belly rice burger, with crispy corn and thai ice tea.

ruthlessly efficient, the food appeared in barely five minutes. first one waiter dropped off the crispy corn, then right aftwerwards a different one came in with the thai ice thai flanked by another dropping off the rice burger itself. i noticed that all seemed to be wearing subtle earpieces.

so here it was, crispy corn thai ice tea and the rice burger. i tried to pick up the burger but it was still a bit too hot to handle. instead, i munched on the corn, the taste of which i can only describe as being "fried bits". it was inoffensive however not particularly compelling, i do not think i would get it again. where did they even pick up some an unusual dish? i don't think i've ever seen it anywhere else before, and i can't really think of any ethnic cuisine to which it might belong. there was no question, though, of where the thai ice tea originated, which was quite good although that might just be the sugar talking.

⊕then, the piece de resistance, the burger. i attacked it again with my bare hands but the fragile rice buns resisted the attack. you would think that they'd compact them somehow to make them more sturdy but no, they are just regular rice grains held together in that shape by pure stickiness. this is probably why they provided what appeared to be a plastic knife and fork behind the burger, which i picked up for my next assault. in fact they were quite solid and certainly not made of plastic. i also noticed that they were oddly elongated. the burger yielded to them easily and i have to admit it tasted pretty good. i guess you can't go all that wrong with pork belly and mayo, though there was an issue where the seaweed garnish would get stuck to the rice and swept up for the ride, spoiling the flavor and texture somewhat. overall i do not think the structure of the dish was ideal, the top rice patty especially felt like it kept getting in the way. if you have to eat it with a knife and a fork anyway then might as well ditch the whole burger pretense and make it more like an eggs benedict, with a single rice patty on the bottom topped with meat and sauce.

i said before that the interior vibe was immaculate, but it was severely lacking in one crucial aspect: the background music in the restaurant accompanying my meal was some of the most painfully generic pop music i have ever heard. i can't believe they dropped the ball this hard when the restaurant is desperately calling for its own idiosyncratic background soundtrack, like when muji had haruomi hosono compose "watering a flower" for their stores. the only relief was the sound of two employees just out of sight beyond the walls of the private booth cleaning the floor, rhythmically pouring some water from an old five gallon soy sauce bucket and then scratchily spreading it around the wooden floor with brooms.

when i was done eating, i summoned the waiter again with the button, and they promptly appeared with a tablet with which i settled the bill. i exited the restaurant, returned to the cold dark sidewalks. despite eating, i was still in a bit of a fatigued daze, if not even deeper in thanks to the surreal meal i had just experienced. was any of that real? kyuramen must be one of those places that only appears if you are completely out of it. i wouldn't be surprised if i couldn't find it again the next day. or, i do find it and there's nothing bizarre about it at all, it is a completely ordinary ramen joint.