Food review: Momo No Ki, Shrewsbury

For a while, it was Shrewsbury’s most popular restaurant. Launched amid a blaze of publicity four years ago, Momo No Ki topped the TripAdvisor polls as it followed in the slipstream of a new wave of interest in Shrewsbury’s dining scene.

Two men were behind its creation – owner Martin Monahan and former Executive Chef Chris Burt. And though the latter has now moved on to pastures new, having been headhunted by two other independent restaurant chains, the work that both men did has helped the restaurant to stay the course.

At the time, its creation seemed typically audacious. Ramen bars were scarce outside major towns and cities – London, Birmingham and the like. Dropping one into a sleepy, rural county suggested that the people behind it were ahead of the curve – or bonkers.

To their credit, it was the former. Chris and Martin saw something in the area that others didn’t. And while there might have been those who wondered why they’d focused on Shropshire, their confidence was well placed. Ramen has proved popular in the past four years and new, similar restaurants have followed in its wake.

The town has more sushi bars, it seems, than any town north of London and it’s the only place this side of Tokyo and Seoul that you can find some of the county’s most exotic and flavoursome ingredients.

Momo No Ki ’17 is different from Momo No Ki ’14 in one key respect. The chef whose ideas still fill the menu is now cooking elsewhere. And yet the kitchen team have by and large stepped up to the plate. Led by Matt Parry, the restaurant remains about one central element: flavour. And when my friend and I visited for a Sunday evening supper, we enjoyed a finger-lickin’, lip-smackin’, belly-rumblin’ dinner. For sure, it wasn’t quite perfect – a little more finesse and precision would have improved our experience – but we left happy, replete and looking forward to similar suppers in due course.

Momo No Ki is delightfully styled. All Japanese-esque furnishings, sparse wooden tables and simple chairs, it’s like something you might find in downtown Osaka. There are splashes of colour and plenty of nods to the Land of the Rising Sun. Modern, vibrant and still-fresh, it’s the perfect space in which to enjoy informal eating. There’s no sense of ceremony or formality – Momo No Ki is an unpretentious, thoroughly convivial space that is conducive to good times.

My friend was looking forward to a bowl of ramen while I was keen to explore the restaurant’s Japas menu – Japanese tapas, geddit. Nestling among the edamame and crispy togarashi tofu was my idea of food heaven – piggy bits. Small pieces of belly pork that had been deep fried until crisp were smothered in Korean BBQ bulgogi sauce and dressed with finely chopped chives and sesame seeds. Bliss. Bulgogi sauce is one of the culinary world’s finest inventions. Forget fire, the wheel, the telephone, goose down pillows and iPhones, the person who came up with bulgogi sauce is, for my money, the best inventor that the world has ever known. A mix of soy sauce, sugar, green onion, garlic, pepper, sesame oil and other bits and pieces, it is sweet and savoury, its fathers swelling like giant waves off a Hawaiian beach. Dee.Lish. My bowl of piggy bits was intended for two, though I ate the lot. I like to think that 9,462km away, someone in downtown Kyoto was murmuring similar eulogies to Heinz Tomato Ketchup while marvelling at the brilliance of a quaint English dish called fish and chips. We will never know.

Bulgogi has a peculiar effect. I once sat with six friends for a six-course dinner in which the food was of a high standard. Fillet beef, partridge, gastronomic fireworks and a couple of desserts made for a deliciously appetising three hours. At the end, one guest stood up and said that although the food and drink had been delightful, did anyone have the recipe for the marinade in which the beef had been steeped? It was the bulgogi.

A pork bun with pickles, hoisin and two thin slices of belly pork was next. And though the bun was a little dry and the skin of the pork belly a little too chewy – as opposed to crisp – the flavours made sweeter music than harp strings. A final dish – spicy chicken sushi with well-seasoned rice, pickled ginger and wasabi that was blast-away-a-summer-cold hot – completed an enjoyable dinner.

My friend enjoyed a similarly enjoyable dining experience. She started with tempura prawns with kimcheeslaw and Japanese wasabi mayo. The tempura batter was exceptional. It broke with a crack, like a tinder-dry twig being snapped over a giant’s knee. The prawns were deliciously plump and sweet were cooked with considerable skill and the flavour-bomb sauces left her purring.

The umami bomb ramen bowl was well received. Though a little residual shell should have been removed from the 62C egg, it was big on satisfying flavour. A piece of miso-crusted salmon was served alongside ramen noodles, shio dashi, the perfectly-set egg yolk – with a consistency of golden fudge – a slice of naruto fishcake and nori seaweed filled a handmade bowl. What’s not to like?

Service was exceptional. Despite of an incorrect drinks order – which was soon rectified – the young waitress who served us was exemplary. Polite, attentive and charm itself, she was utterly pleasant throughout and made our evening all the more enjoyable. Full marks to her.

Momo No Ki remains one of Shrewsbury’s more interesting restaurants. The culinary fingerprints of the off the cuff chef who saw it to fruition remain all over it – and that’s probably a good thing, for Burt’s passion for South Asian dining is one that Shrewsbury has welcomed with open arms. The team that remains is doing a pretty good job. It’s from the same organisation that brought the town The Peach Tree and Havana Republic and standards are generally high. There’s always room for a little improvement – crisp the skin in the pork bun, remove all of the egg shell and take out the tiny bits of bone from the piggy bits – but such fripperies aside, we had a thoroughly enjoyable evening. It remains one of Shrewsbury’s go-to venues.