Tanpopo

I wasn't feeling well while debating supper choices.  Naturally, when not in top form, I'm really seeking a form of edible comfort and home-y-ness, but it's hard to find a restaurant that serves white bread cinnamon toast on a My Little Pony TV Tray in my Mamaw's house in North Little Rock circa 1987.  Tough to find that particular milieu.  So instead, I crave soup.

I picked Tanpopo because 1) I'd never been 2) it was in St. Paul, which was necessary for my evening and 3) several googled web searches pulled up its mushroom soba noodle soup as one of the best vegetarian soups in the Cities. Sold. 

We started off with edamame (of course) and then settled into our steaming bowls of simple goodness.  I don't profess to be a "real" foodie.  Those people, in my mind, actually possess an impressive level of knowledge about food, its origins, its import, its traditions.  All I can profess to is an overall curiosity about and enjoyment of food.  So when I say the bowl of soba noodles at Tanpopo tasted like everything I imagine "umami" to embody, as if I fully grasp what umami is supposed to encompass, I kinda feel like a snob.  In all honesty, I'd never really heard about this fifth taste (to complement the other four: bitter, sweet, salty, sour) until recent Food Network shows. The first time I heard it, in relation to an umami burger at some joint visited by Guy Fieri, I thought it was an actual food. Maybe a vegetable of some sort? 

But a quick review of Wikipedia taught me that umami is a distinct flavor, a "pleasant savory" taste (there's even an Umami International Symposium, just fyi).  And that is exactly what that mushroom soba noodle bowl recalled for me. So warm, light and yet densely satisfying, pleasant, savory, meaty despite the absence of meat in my bowl, each component perfectly married to the rest. It was just the perfect comfort for a kind of icky day and a good beginning to a happy evening. You can't really ask any more of a soup, can you? 

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