A Miso Collaboration That Reshaped Men-Eiji's Signature Bowl

When Men-Eiji's founder Jun Furukawa returned from a whirlwind season of overseas events, he carried back more than a notebook full of flavour ideas. He also brought a renewed respect for the way miso can anchor a broth without drowning it. That respect soon became a partnership, and the partnership became a permanent feature on the menu at both Sapporo locations.

The collaboration in question paired Furukawa with a seasoned miso specialist from Nagoya, a city whose fermented bean pastes are as famous as Sapporo's corn-butter tradition. Together, they spent weeks testing ratios in the basement kitchen of Hiragishi BASE, treating each pot of broth like a small argument between two cuisines that needed to learn to share a sentence.

What emerged was a bowl that kept everything Men-Eiji regulars had fallen in love with, then added a quiet, earthy punctuation at the back of the palate. For diners in Adelaide, Brisbane and beyond who had previously travelled to Hokkaido specifically to taste the gyokai-tonkotsu base, the miso twist became a reason to book another ticket.

The Spark Behind the Miso Twist

Furukawa had long admired how Nagoya chefs used hatcho and red miso as structural elements rather than as flavouring alone. During a 2024 residency in Sydney, he kept noticing how Australian palates, trained on slow-cooked lamb shanks and long-simmered beef cheeks, responded warmly to broths that announced themselves with a savoury thud rather than a polite whisper. The observation lodged in his mind and refused to leave.

Back in Sapporo, he reached out to a miso maker whose family had been culturing koji for three generations. Their first conversation happened over a video call at three in the morning Sapporo time, because the collaborator was finishing a fermentation cycle and wanted to talk while the koji was still warm. That late-hour honesty became the unofficial brief for the whole project.

The collaboration was framed less as a guest feature and more as a long conversation. They agreed to build a miso paste specifically calibrated for seafood-pork hybrid broths, an unusual request that required new blends of barley and rice koji. The result was a paste that could sit in a pot at rolling boil without losing its character, something most retail miso cannot do.

Two Kitchens, One Philosophy

Hiragishi BASE already had a kitchen culture shaped by Furukawa's years working between Japan and Europe. The miso collaborator arrived with a different rhythm, one built around patience measured in months rather than hours. The first week of joint testing felt almost like two musicians trying to find a shared tempo, with plenty of polite silence between attempts.

Once they did, the testing accelerated. Each morning started with a tasting of the previous day's broth, recorded in notebooks that soon looked more like laboratory logs than recipe cards. Staff at the counter would glance in, smell the steam, and quietly take notes for the lunch service. The dish became a team project before it became a menu item.

By the third week, the pair had narrowed down three candidate misos, each paired with a different intensity of pork bone and seafood stock. The final pick was the one that tasted most like Hokkaido winter, deep but not heavy, with a faint sweetness that recalled dried scallops folded into the base. That nuance is what now defines the seasonal miso gyokai bowl.

Building a Miso-Gyokai Broth From Scratch

The technical challenge was layering. Men-Eiji's signature broth is built on pork bones simmered for nearly twenty hours, then finished with a kombu-and-bonito dashi that brightens the fat. Adding miso risks turning the pot into a single, muddy note, especially because most commercial miso dissolves quickly and overpowers delicate seafood aromas from the bonito and niboshi.

The collaborators solved this by introducing the miso paste in two stages. A small portion goes into the pot during the final hour, where it melds with the marrow and collagen. The remainder is whisked into tare at the service station, so each bowl gets a personalised concentration depending on the diner's request. This dual-stage method has since been adopted at Duck Ramen EIJI as well.

The tare itself includes a touch of yuzu zest and a splash of rice vinegar, a small concession to Australian feedback gathered during pop-ups in Melbourne and Perth, where diners asked for a slightly brighter finish to balance richer proteins like pork belly and slow-cooked chicken. Furukawa took that feedback seriously, and the result is a broth that feels rooted in Sapporo yet responsive to overseas palates.

What the Twist Tastes Like on the Tongue

The first impression is the familiar depth of gyokai-tonkotsu, that almost meaty umami that coats the back of the throat. The miso arrives a beat later, not as a separate flavour but as a gentle pull downward, the way a bass note grounds a piece of music. It is the kind of flavour that makes you reach for the spoon again before you have consciously decided you want more.

Regulars describe the aroma as closer to roasted barley than to soy sauce. There is a faint caramel edge, almost burnt-marshmallow in character, that comes from the long koji cultivation. Noodles are the standard medium-thick Hokkaido style, and the toppings remain restrained: chashu, menma, a single sheet of nori, and a small spoonful of the new miso paste served on the side so diners can adjust the intensity themselves.

For Australians who first encountered Men-Eiji through international pop-ups, the bowl feels like a quiet homecoming. For Sapporo locals, it feels like a respectful evolution. Both audiences, it turns out, were waiting for the same thing, a broth that knew exactly when to speak and when to listen. The wider effect of those pop-ups on the home menu is explored further in a piece on pop-up influence.

Reactions From Sapporo to the Australian Ramen Scene

The miso collaboration landed at a moment when Australian diners were actively seeking deeper, more regionally specific ramen beyond the generic tonkotsu that dominated food courts in Sydney and Melbourne. Critics from Brisbane's Japanese-language food press were among the first to flag the dish when it appeared at a small event in South Bank, where it drew queues around the block and quick sell-outs by the second evening.

Back in Hokkaido, the response was more measured but equally engaged. Locals debated on ramen forums whether the new bowl constituted a betrayal of the gyokai base or a logical extension of it. The verdict, by and large, was the latter, particularly once the seasonal nature of the dish became clear. Furukawa has been clear that the miso bowl will rotate with the cooler months and step aside for lighter shio variations once spring arrives.

Industry observers across Australia have pointed out that collaborations like this one matter because they push the local ramen conversation away from imitation and toward interpretation. Rather than replicating a Tokyo or Fukuoka original, Men-Eiji is openly building a Sapporo-specific dialect, and inviting guests from Perth to Hobart to hear the accent for themselves.

Comparing Miso Options Across Both Sapporo Locations

Feature Hiragishi BASE Seasonal Miso Duck Ramen EIJI Smoked Miso Variant
Base broth Standard gyokai-tonkotsu, 20-hour simmer Duck-fat enriched gyokai, 22-hour simmer
Miso type Hatcho and red miso blend Red miso lightly smoked over cherry wood
Intensity level Medium, adjustable at the counter Medium-high, fixed for the duck pairing
Signature topping Chashu, menma, nori, side miso Duck chashu, menma, leek, smoked miso swirl
Best season Autumn and winter Late autumn through early spring
Pairing suggestion Light beer or roasted hojicha Smoked whisky or aged sake

Practical Pointers for Curious Diners

Book a seat at Hiragishi BASE or Duck Ramen EIJI the next time you are planning a Hokkaido itinerary, and ask for the seasonal miso bowl by name. The dish rewards the curious, and the kitchen is always happy to walk first-time diners through the two-stage miso method that makes the broth what it is. For those who cannot make it to Sapporo straight away, keep an eye on Furukawa's upcoming international dates, because the miso collaboration tends to travel with him, and a bowl tasted in Melbourne or Perth is often the easiest way to decide whether the trip north is worth it.