There was a long wait at Bette's and my friend Rachel and I were anxious to try something new. Feeling like traitors, we walked across the street from our weekly brunch spot and looked at the menu for O Chame. O Chame is consistently ranked in the Chronicle's Top 100 list, and everyone online seems to rave about their udon noodle soup. I should have known better than to trust the Yelpers, but I figured that of all people, Michael Bauer had to have decent taste when it came to restaurants.
The restaurant is very cute. They use very unique, thick, beautiful pottery for every dish. Everything is very well thought out when it comes to aesthetics. Rachel and I decided to go big and have a tuna sashimi appetizer. For the main course, she went with udon noodles with shrimp, seaweed and sprouts, and I ordered soba with pork tenderloin, radishes and spinach (I'm not a big udon fan, I prefer soba. Good soba. Katsumi said it's an Asian thing.)
The tuna appetizer was not only presented well, but tasted amazing. The tuna was actually lightly seared and cut into thin, but not too thin, bite size pieces. It was served on a bed of braised leeks with a horseradish/mayo sauce. I loved this dish. The tuna was so soft it almost melted in my mouth. It was obvious that the chef knew how to properly cut fish. Often in the U.S. when I go out for sashimi, the pieces are so big that I have to bite them in half, and then sometimes the fish isn't cut properly/isn't totally fresh so it's more chewy than it should be. This fish was not only fresh but it was cut perfectly.
I think I would have enjoyed that dish even more if it had a bit less of the horseradish sauce. While I really enjoyed it, it overwhelmed the fish and made me concentrate solely on the burning sensation in my nose. Still, this is definitely a recommended dish. The main courses, however...
Let me tell you about the soba and udon that I had in Japan. I had it served two different ways. At the upscale restaurant that we went to with Katsumi, I had cold soba noodles, where the soba (made fresh at the restaurant, daily) was lightly cooked, then drained on a basket, served cold with a bowl of salty, hot, highly seasoned soup. The noodles, which still have a bite to them since they haven't been sitting all day in soup, get dunked into the soup one bite at a time. Same with the udon--the noodles might be thick and almost work like but even they have a tiny firmness to the middle of them.
In Japan I tried hot soba. At the airport. For about ten U.S. dollars, including tempura, rice, tea, radishes, and soup side dishes, I got hot soba noodles in soup. They weren't bad. They weren't mushy but they didn't have much bite to them, and the flavor of the noodle wasn't as distinct as it was at the upscale place. Not bad, but considering I got tempura and rice along with everything else, I wasn't going to complain. Besides, it was better than anything we'd get at a U.S. airport.
Flash forward to O Chame. My soba came hot. It was beautifully presented, with the bright green spinach all on one side, the perfect round slices of pork tenderloin in the middle and radiant yellow radishes on the other side. Rachel's was also gorgeous. The noodles looked more like linguini noodles, but they were all nestled in the bottom, covered with pink shrimps floating on top, surrounded by dark green seaweed.
Now keep in mind that my expectations were already kind of low, considering the waitress said that they don't even make their noodles fresh at the restaurant (what restaurant, known for noodles, doesn't make them??), but both of us were extremely disappointed in our dishes.
First of all, my noodles were practically soggy, as if they had been sitting in the soup for fifteen minutes. Either that, or maybe the noodles just weren't quite the proper consistency when they were made. Or, they may have been over boiled since they were most likely pre-made and dried instead of cooked fresh. Rachel said that her udon noodles were also soggy, and that she didn't like the texture. Though she hasn't gone to Japan before, the udon that she is accustomed to is what I know--fat. These linguini-like atrocities practically broke as she applied pressure on them with her chopsticks.
The accompanying veggies and meat in my soup didn't help either. The radishes weren't bad, but didn't do much for me in the flavor department. They were rather bland. The spinach was...boiled spinach. The pork tenderloin was edible but not the Japanese style that I was expecting.
Every time that I ordered pork in noodle soup at a Japanese restaurant, it would come in very thin, bite sized pieces, with a small section of fat on the end for flavor. It was grilled first, to get the juices flowing and then put on top of the soup.
Maybe it's the California influence, but this pork tenderloin had no fat on it, it was about a half inch thick, and needed to be eaten in about two bites. It also tasted like it had just been boiled instead of grilled, because it was pretty dry and didn't have any flavor. When I tried dunking it for long periods of time into the soup, it didn't really do anything since the soup was so delicate in flavor (but tasty-probably the best thing about the whole dish), and the meat was so thick that the soup couldn't permeate it to make it juicier.
This stupid noodle dish cost me $12 alone.
Everyone who recommends this place is crazy. Were you thinking about recommending this place to me? If so, you are crazy too. The noodles that they are known for aren't even fresh and they don't cook them well. If I had to go back, I wouldn't be upset about ordering from the appetizer section and maybe relaxing and admiring the pottery, but I would be upset if I had to foot the bill for anything on their soup list. Perhaps Bette's Diner was sending us bad traitor vibes from afar, but I'm skeptical.
Doubting me? Try it yourself. I'll be across the street enjoying my Maryland Breakfast with crispy potatoes, nicely seasoned corned beef and runny eggs:
O Chame is located in the 4th Street area, at 1830 4th Street in Berkeley, CA.
Phone reservations can be made by calling (510) 841-8783
The restaurant is open for lunch, Monday through Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Dinner is served Monday through Thursday from 5:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., and Friday through Saturday from 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
They also have a website: http://www.themenupage.com/ochame.html
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