Gumshara

Gumshara is a renowned Chinatown ramen shop serving what Merivale’s Dan Hong has called both “the chronic” and Australia’s “most hectic” tonkotsu soup. For 14 years it traded inside the now-shuttered Eating World food court on the corner of Dixon and Goulburn streets, before moving to this dedicated site in 2023.

Gumshara’s cult-status soups are the work of Mori Higashida, a Japanese expat who longed for proper ramen in Sydney. So he quit his day job as a jeweller and went back to Japan to apprentice at Kyoto’s famous Muteppou. He returned to Sydney and opened Gumshara in 2009.

Higashida estimates only 20 other shops in Japan use the same unique method he does. Before Gumshara first opened to the public, Higashida and his master made a base soup over seven days, with more than two tonnes of pork bones. It’s been continuously topped up with water and around 300 kilograms of fresh pork bones (exclusively from the animal’s back legs for maximum marrow content) every day since.

And yes, the ramen is hectic. Head to the counter to order, and when your number is called you’ll receive a tangle of toothsome noodles in a bath of intensely savoury pork soup that’s so thick it’s like gravy on a Sunday roast. Every slurp of the stuff coats your mouth in umami. Zhoosh up your bowl with condiments – or your soup with lighter broths – at the self-serve station and tuck into one of Sydney's most essential dishes.