Towzen began in Kyoto in 2004 as a small soy milk ramen restaurant, with its roots in shojin ryori, the traditional vegetarian cooking connected to Zen Buddhism. Kuala Lumpur is its first venture outside Japan.

But enough history. The food is so damn good. What I particularly love is that nothing is pretending to be meat. I have never really understood fake meat. A mushroom is perfectly capable of being a mushroom, and the fried mushrooms here are phenomenal. Somehow they give you that same deeply satisfying feeling you sometimes miss when you don’t eat meat. Crispy, substantial and delicious, but still very much a mushroom.

And then there is the soup.
The soy milk and sesame broth is creamy, rich and incredibly comforting. The kind of soup where you finish the bowl and immediately start wondering what everyone else ordered.

I had the black charcoal sesame soy milk ramen. Completely black. Not necessarily the prettiest thing to photograph, but absolutely delicious and very pretty to look at !

Some things really are better in black and white.

This is also one of those restaurants where I would recommend going with a whole group. The menu makes you want to try everything, so order too much, put it all in the middle and share.

I certainly didn’t manage to eat my way through the menu. Which is a very good reason to go back.