Great Soup With Bad Fundamentals: My MENSHO Experience

My friend's overcrowded soup

I have always been a negative person. When I was young, my mother filled up a bowl halfway with broth. She asked, "Soup Connoisseur, is this bowl half full or half empty?"

"Half empty," I replied, eyes fixed on the broth. My mother, stunned, opened her mouth once again to reprimand me. But I was already face-first, eating the broth.

It is with this true anecdote that I foreground this soup review. One must ask the question, "Can a good thing also be bad?" More importantly, can great soup also have a dark side?

This is the question I was faced with two weeks ago as I ventured to a very popular restaurant in Oakland, California known by the name of MENSHO. Very many people have suggested this establishment, so safe to say that my soup senses were running hot. They are well-known for their ramen, which various acquaintances of mine have raved about.

But their opinions do not matter. Only mine does. Because I am the great arbiter of soup, the judge of broth, the last truly neutral evaluator of right and wrong on the culinary podium. I, therefore, take great responsibility in this review, as I am doing a great responsibility to you, your tastebuds, and all eight billion soup-eating homo sapiens across the globe.

Now, I know what you may be thinking — what kind of name is MENSHO? Shouldn't that be the name of a gay nightclub? I know you probably also jumped to such conclusions. While I am a great friend to the LGBTQ+ community, I wanted to have soup on this night, not listen to Charlotte XCX. Perhaps they should make the name of the restaurant lowercase so it sounds less like a gay nightclub, which are known for having names in all capitals like FELLAS and TOPS and others as such. But I am no name expert; I am only an expert of soup. Thus, I digress.

Like a gay nightclub, however, this restaurant had a massive line out the door. They do not take reservations — granted, something I am a fan of, as this is the most egalitarian way of obtaining a restaurant's soup. First come, first soup. However, this line was much too long, and it was full of millennial generation peoples due to the viral nature of this establishment. It was also very hard to find parking in the area, which is not ostensibly the restaurant's fault, but caused me great annoyance nonetheless. Luckily, there was another Japanese restaurant nearby where my friend and I shared an appetizer to pass the time, and I even received a complementary miso soup.

Enthused by my free soup experience, we returned to the restaurant once our table was ready. Sitting down in the restaurant, I noticed several things that made me begin to question the very fundamentals of this establishment.

Firstly, the restaurant had two rooms, but the entire first room was occupied with a non-functional display of cooking utensils. Frankly, this is an unacceptable use of space, and they would receive far more clientele if they were to maximize the productive capabilities of their restaurant. This greatly annoyed me as both a soup enjoyer and soup entrepreneur.

But this was far less disturbing than what I saw on the walls of this house of broth. On all walls, they had paragraphs explaining the restaurant's history, how they source ingredients, and how they prepare the soup. And frankly, my complateriots, I cannot stand for this.

Do not tell me about how you make your soup before I have eaten it! Do not regale me with tales of how your soup is superior to the rest! You have ruined the mystique of the soup for me, the very essence of what it means to be a lover of broth. The magic had immediately evaporated like vegetable broth left in the sun for three days. I would like to be the Hansel of hot and sour soup, stumbling into the witch's cottage to drink her mysterious brew. If I am left unconscious by it, that is fine by me.

But this raises another important point. Why wax poetic on the qualities of your soup? I hereby, in the strongest terms possible, command all soup restaurants to Stand By Your Soup. Do not tell me how your products are the best and most organically and ethically sourced. Do not explain to me how you make your broth better than all else. And certainly do not pester me with glowing reviews from lesser soup-eaters. Your soup should speak for itself. If you write an essay for me, the soup writes a novel. A wall paragraph has the intellectual depth of a children's book; soup writes like Dostoevsky, its great flavors composing a liquid The Brothers Karamazov, which was very likely written besides many bowls of borscht. Dostoevsky himself would therefore agree with me, and if he were alive today, he would say "#StandByYourSoup, or else I'm about to pop off."

Still, I remained seated, affixed on the soups whirring by me to other tables. Finally, my soup arrived, MENSHO's "Signature Smoky" broth, whose initials are already quite problematic. Staring at the bowl beforeth me, I felt a pit in my chest. Surely, this could not be!

But the proof was in the pho that they did not stand by their soup. For alas, this was an overcrowded bowl of various items. The noodles were everywhere. Various vegetables found their way into the broth. Most disturbingly, the soup had not one, not two, but three different types of meat.

As any blog reader of mine knows, I love meats. But this was far too much. There was duck, pork, and beef in my ramen bowl. Frankly, I am not sure these animals would be friends outside of a bowl. But in the bowl, they were surely misused. Why does one need so much variety? Pork and duck dominated the vessel, while the beef, thrown in half-raw, was a mere afterthought.

Stand By Your Soup! One does not need endless clutter in their soup. We do not need an entire farm on our tongues. By adding more and more ingredients, you, the owners of MENSHO, disrespect the very status of soup. You detract from the basic substance of broth, the very heart and soul of the soup. And not only this! By adding too many ingredients to my bowl, you decrease the total volume of broth you can add to the vessel, therefore depriving me of its signature smokyness.

Though enraged, I decided to eat the soup. It is my great displeasure to report that it was quite delicious. The noodles had a great texture, the pork and duck tickled my tongue, and the broth was indeed smoky. Of course, it had quite an excellent viscosity. The only truly awful part was the beef, haphazardly thrown in and quite underwhelming.

While I enjoyed the tasting experience on the whole, I cannot in good conscience be positive about my experience. Take note, you MENSHOviks. The bowl can only be half-full if you Stand By Your Soup.