What Makes Men-Eiji's Chashu Topping Melt-in-the-Mouth Tender

Sapporo ramen has earned a worldwide following for bowls that arrive piping hot with deeply flavoured broth, springy noodles, and sliced pork that feels almost weightless on the tongue. Among the city's most respected gyokai-tonkotsu specialists, MEN-EIJI has turned its chashu topping into a signature element — a layer of slow-cooked pork that pulls apart with a chopstick and dissolves into the soup beneath.

For Australian diners who have encountered chashu on menus from Melbourne to Brisbane, the experience at MEN-EIJI feels distinctly different. The restaurant's founder, Jun Furukawa, trained for years in Japanese kitchens before launching his Sapporo brand, and his approach to chashu reflects the same precision found in the broth itself.

The toppings on a bowl of ramen may seem simple on a list of ingredients, yet each element carries years of technique. At MEN-EIJI, the chashu begins as a piece of pork belly and ends as a folded ribbon of tenderness — a transformation shaped by sourcing, trimming, braising, slicing, and a final torch sear.

Anyone exploring the brand's two Hokkaido venues — MEN-EIJI Hiragishi BASE and Duck Ramen EIJI — will notice the bowls arrive with chashu arranged in a careful rosette. That presentation is not decoration; it signals a deeply considered preparation that has earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand and a global following through pop-ups and chef collaborations.

The Broth That Frames the Chashu

A bowl of gyokai-tonkotsu begins with a long, quiet simmer of seafood and pork bones. The broth at MEN-EIJI runs for hours, releasing collagen, marrow, and aromatic oils that coat every strand of the topping and every curl of noodle. Chashu served into such a broth behaves differently from chashu floating in a lighter shoyu; the emulsion clings to the meat and softens its edges.

Australian ramen lovers will recognise this from the heavy-tonkotsu style now common in Melbourne's CBD and Sydney's Chatswood precinct. Yet the variation in pork-and-seafood blend at MEN-EIJI sets the broth apart, drawing on both surf and land to create a richer backdrop for the chashu.

That broth decides how the pork reads in the final bite. When the meat is gentle, almost falling apart, the soup carries it across the palate. When the broth is too thin, even excellent chashu feels chewy or dry. Furukawa has spoken about this relationship in interviews, calling the broth and chashu two halves of one ingredient.

Pork Selection and Preparation Tradition

The cut used at MEN-EIJI is pork belly, selected for its ratio of fat to lean. Sourced from pigs raised on reliable feed programs, the slab is trimmed of excess rind, squared off, and tied with cotton twine before cooking. The aim is a uniform thickness that braises evenly from edge to centre.

Australia's commercial pork industry largely runs on Large White, Landrace, and Duroc breeds, though heritage Berkshire pork has become widely available through boutique butchers in Sydney and Melbourne. The marbling of Berkshire pork belly behaves similarly to the pork Jun Furukawa sources in Hokkaido, where farmers favour older lines and slower growth. Restaurants and home cooks increasingly seek out belly with visible intramuscular fat for chashu, and Australian suppliers serving the King St Wharf dining strip have noticed the demand.

Once the belly arrives at the kitchen, it rests in a dry cure of salt, sugar, and a measured splash of soy. The cure seasons the meat through and firms the protein, a step borrowed from charcuterie traditions across East Asia. After curing, the belly rolls into a tight cylinder, the twine holding it compact so the layers of fat and muscle cook as one. Both Japanese kitchens and Australian operations follow strict handling protocols; in Australia, the Food Standards Code administered by FSANZ sets clear rules on curing times, salt concentrations, and cold-chain handling, and any commercial chashu must comply before it reaches a customer.

The Slow-Cooking Method

The braise is the heart of the transformation. The rolled belly slides into a stock of dashi, mirin, soy, and a measure of the gyokai-tonkotsu broth itself. The liquid barely trembles on the burner — a true simmer keeps the meat from toughening. After roughly three hours, the belly is fork-tender, the connective tissue having softened into gelatin that melts on contact.

Australian chefs preparing chashu at home often rely on a slow cooker for similar results, leaving the belly at a low setting for six to eight hours. The technique translates cleanly, and small kitchens in Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide have produced versions worthy of serious ramen bars. Slow cooking matters more than the appliance.

Once cooked, the belly cools in its own liquid, a step called resting-in-stock that keeps the meat moist. When the chashu is sliced later, the cross-section reveals concentric rings of fat and lean, a pattern Japanese diners call rokkasei, or six-layer cross-section. That pattern is what diners recognise as proper chashu, and it is one of the visual cues that signals careful technique rather than rushed preparation.

Finishing Touches and Serving Style

Slicing happens just before service. Each disk of chashu is cut thin — roughly three to four millimetres — so it warms quickly in the broth and releases flavour the moment the bowl arrives at the table. A quick pass with a kitchen torch adds caramelisation on the edges, deepening the aroma without cooking the meat through.

The presentation folds the slices over each other in a rosette, with the torched edges facing up. Beneath the chashu, a slick of aromatic oil pools on the broth's surface. Together, the colours suggest the full journey of the dish: the deep ivory of pork, the russet of caramelised edges, the gleam of pure pork fat floating above the dashi-tonkotsu base.

Australian ramen enthusiasts who follow chefs like the team behind Melbourne's winter vegetable garden work — which often highlights root vegetables alongside slow-cooked proteins — will spot parallels in approach. The care given to a single topping is the same care given to a single carrot or sprig of broccoli. Both reflect a kitchen that refuses to treat any element as background.

A Reputation Earned Across Continents

The chashu at MEN-EIJI has travelled further than Sapporo. Furukawa has staged pop-ups in cities across Asia and Europe, and the brand has been recognised in publications that track Japanese cuisine abroad. A Michelin Bib Gourmand sits alongside collaborations that have introduced the broth-and-chashu pairing to audiences who might never set foot in Hokkaido.

For Australian diners planning a winter pilgrimage to northern Japan, the chashu has become a quiet draw on its own. The bowls at both Sapporo locations — the Hiragishi BASE venue and the sister shop, Duck Ramen EIJI — offer the topping as standard, while seasonal specials feature chashu raised to the centre of the dish, presented with tare and freshly ground sesame.

Word of the topping spread through Australian food media years ago, and it has only grown with each pop-up visit. Visitors from Sydney and Melbourne now list the Sapporo shops on culinary itineraries in the same breath as visits to the city's miso ramen landmarks. The chashu, in many ways, has become the introduction to a brand that once sounded local and now feels international.

Here is a quick comparison of chashu preparation styles commonly seen in Australia and Japan:

Element	Typical Australian Ramen Bar	MEN-EIJI Standard
Cut	Pork belly or shoulder	Pork belly, hand-trimmed
Cure	Salt, sugar, soy (1–2 hours)	Salt, sugar, soy, rest overnight
Cook method	Slow cooker or low oven	Stovetop simmer in dashi-mirin broth
Cook time	4–6 hours	Around 3 hours at gentle heat
Slicing	Just before service	Just before service, 3–4 mm
Finish	Light pan-sear	Brief torch pass
Serving position	Folded or rolled on top	Rosette with torched edges facing up

Across each step of the comparison, MEN-EIJI's method echoes the slower, more deliberate rhythm of a Sapporo kitchen working at the source of its ingredients.

If the description of this topping has stirred a winter craving, plan a visit to one of the two Sapporo venues and taste the chashu in its full context. The bowls at MEN-EIJI Hiragishi BASE and Duck Ramen EIJI remain the only way to appreciate how the sliced pork interacts with Jun Furukawa's gyokai-tonkotsu broth at the source. Travellers from Brisbane or Sydney can pair the trip with a week on the slopes of Niseko or a leisurely sweep through Sapporo's Susukino district, finishing each day with a bowl that shows exactly why this topping has earned its reputation among ramen fans across continents.