The journal 5 notes
Written after close, published when it is finished.
Working notes on broth, sourcing and the small operational decisions that decide whether a bowl at one in the morning is as good as a bowl at seven. No recipes, no news, nothing on a schedule.
Latest
Nineteen hours, and why not twenty
We ran the same tonkotsu pot to sixteen, nineteen and twenty-two hours for a month and tasted all three side by side. One of them was obviously right, and it was not the longest.
2026
- The noodle maker on Dunbar StreetWe have bought every noodle in this building from the same two people since 2016. Here is what they will and will not do for us, and why we stopped asking for the thing we wanted most.sourcingnoodles2 min
- What happens at 2:40 in the morningThe last twenty minutes of a Saturday are not like any other part of the week. Nine years of them, written down before we forget what they were like.the roomlate2 min
2025
- Why we stopped taking substitutions after elevenIt was not about purity. It was about one cook, three pots and a pass that had started making mistakes at the exact hour the room got busiest.rulesservice2 min
- Salt, and the year we got it wrongFor most of 2023 our bowls were slightly under-seasoned and we blamed the broth. The problem was a tare jar, a new fridge and a number nobody was writing down.methodtare2 min