Rip It Up

Food and Drink

Ramen pizza is totally a thing at new Adelaide Japanese-Australian café

Words by Walter Marsh March 11, 2016

With blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em menu items like ramen pizza and noodle-bun sliders, recently opened suburban café Black Dog Gallery is making a name for itself with a playful collision of Japanese and Western food that pushes the art of ramen into novel new territory.

Set just a little further up Greenhill Road than you might normally venture, this contemporary Japanese café and gallery quietly opened in December and has been gradually cultivating a local following ever since.

As owner and chef Jun explains to ripitup.com.au, Black Dog’s menu is a combination of his own Japanese background, strongly informed by the decade he’s spent working in Australian kitchens. “I am Japanese, but I’ve been here 10 years,” he says. “I’m a qualified chef here – I actually don’t have much experience in Japanese cuisine, I’ve always cooked in local restaurants. But I had a basic knowledge,” he says.

Black Dog Gallery, Adelaide

“Because I’ve always cooked in a Western kitchen, as head chef or sous chef, I understand what Adelaide people taste,” he says. “For example many Japanese chefs just do the same thing here as Japan, but I don’t think that works.

“My ramen stock is kind of the traditional style, but half of it is chicken stock like in French or Western cuisine,” he says as an example. “I’m still throwing the traditional way, but also mixing it with Western cuisine style.”

One eye-catching example of this blend is ramen pizza, the latest in a series of experiments Jun has introduced as temporary additions to the Black Dog Gallery menu.

“I’m always playing with the ramen as a special, so at the moment I’m doing pizza but I’ve also done sliders,” he says, showing us a photo of tiny, curious looking burgers with ramen standing in for buns. “I have lots of ideas in my head, so it’s always changing! I’m always coming up with new things.”

Ramen Pizza at Black Dog Gallery

Hit the road bread, there’s a new pizza base in town

Initially some customers were taken aback by the idea of a Japanese breakfast experience. But as Jun explains, many of the most popular Japanese dishes in Australia aren’t necessarily what the Japanese would consider breakfast either. With dishes ranging from grilled Atlantic salmon with salted soft boiled egg, kale and shitake mushroom salad and tofu burgers all served with rice and miso soup, there are plenty of fetching alternatives to all the usual, ubiquitous menu items like big breakfast plates or muesli.

“These days people are just realizing what a Japanese breakfast is, and see the healthy options we have,” he says. “And then after 10.00am we start ramen brunch. Also Japanese food is very friendly to vegan or vegetarians.

And perhaps unique among Adelaide’s wave of café, there’s nary a smashed avocado in sight.

Black Dog Gallery, Adelaide

More you might like:

Ginza Miyako: Japanese cuisine gets a French twist
Mama Jambo wine bar and café opens in former Hello, Yes space
Fiefy’s Specialty Café opens new location

Where

Shop 4, 455 Greenhill Road, Tusmore

Opening Hours

Tuesday – Friday: 7.30am – 4.30pm
Saturday – Sunday: 8.00am – 4.00pm

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