Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/724773
f a l l 2 0 1 6 | 7 Chefs Moishe Hahn- Schuman and Matthew Williams, co-owners of Ramen Gaijin in Sebastopol, CA. We wanted to see Taub's mushrooms in action, so we headed to Sebastopol, a small town of 7,000 in Northern California, an unlikely place to find Japanese ramen with noodles made by hand, small- plate izakaya dishes and a cocktail list that would rival any big city mixology joint. Yet ever since co-owners Chefs Matthew Williams and Moishe Hahn-Schuman opened the Ramen Gaijin in 2014, people have flocked from all over Sonoma County to imbibe and dine on the fresh, delicious dishes. Ramen Gaijin originally started up as a pop-up at Woodfour Brewing Company at The Barlow in Sebastopol, before its runaway success after eight months led Williams and Hahn-Schuman to open the restaurant in a more permanent location. Hahn-Schuman notes, "I used to live in Hawaii, and I was inspired by saimin, which is a Hawaii take on Japanese ramen. We started serving it at family meal at Woodfour, and in the summer of 2013 it evolved into a pop-up." Almost everything at the restaurant is made in-house and with local ingredients when possible. Both Williams and Hahn-Schuman had known Taube for years, and Ramen Gaijin's dedication to fresh produce and ingredients was a perfect fit with Taube's mushrooms. Williams explains, "We wanted to highlight the locality and provenance of our ingredients. Ramen is such a regional dish in Japan, we wanted to make a type of ramen that would be regional to Sonoma County." The two chefs create dishes around the mushrooms that Taube brings in, whether it's matsutake in the ra- men, pickled chanterelles on their pickle plate or morels with their onigiri. However, Taube's mushrooms find their way onto the menu in more forms than food. Black trumpets are used in place of a cherry in their Tanuki cocktail, a play on a Man- hattan. There's their Candy Cap cocktail, which has dehydrated candy caps that are infused with Japanese Akashi White Oak Whiskey. "We worked with Scott Beattie [former Bar Director of the now-shuttered Cyrus in Healdsburg] to create a beverage menu of Asian/Japanese-inspired cocktails, using ingredients like Taube's mushrooms and fermentation crafter Gillian Helquist's [of Healdsburg's "grange" SHED] shrubs." With restaurants like Ramen Gaijin making use of wild mushrooms in such a wide variety of applications, Taube is helping to prove that a little foraged fungi can go a long way. Ramen Gaijin's pork belly ramen with fresh chanterelles. Yaki onigiri, grilled rice with nori and morels. Ramen Gaijin's Tanuki, cocktail, a play on a Manhattan with a black trumpet mushroom garnish. ■cr