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Tom Perkins
Shoyu ramen from Shun in Madison heights.
For the most part, chefs at restaurants Metro Times reviews grew up cooking in kitchens at their parents’ restaurant, cut their teeth as a line cook for years, or otherwise arrived at their position steeped in culinary tradition.
But every now and again, I encounter a chef with no culinary experience who never had a real drive to run a kitchen, but still got really good at making one dish — almost an accidental chef. Kevin Chai, 30, who makes ramen at his Madison Heights restaurant, Shun, fits that mold.
Chai claims to know little of the culinary arts, but ramen videos on YouTube he watched in 2019 piqued his interest in preparing one of his favorite dishes. He started tinkering, then came across an ad for a ramen school in Japan.
Almost on a whim he enrolled, and the month-long program taught him about ramen theory and the basics of building flavor. But his graduation was ill-timed — he caught one of the last flights back to the U.S. as the pandemic hit in early 2020.
As the world returned to some semblance of normalcy in 2021, Chai felt the need to do something to shake off the stress of the pandemic, and the idea for Shun took shape. After a few months of workshopping recipes, Chai and his dad, who had previously worked in kitchens at a range of restaurants, opened Shun in 2022.
Word is finally getting out, and, folks, it is deserved. Chai, with no claim to culinary skill beyond ramen, is instantly making hits.
His spicy tonkotsu is deep and a tad viscous — it sticks to your tongue, but not too much so. To thicken the broth a bit, Chai emulsifies the gelatin in bone marrow — he uses a marrow-rich pork femur bone — and lets it simmer for about 24 hours. It arrives with tender slices of pork sirloin char siu, a departure from the usual pork belly, which is a switch Chai said he prefers because the sirloin holds some fat marbling and isn’t dry, but it’s also not overly fatty. The bowl is rounded out with a soy-braised egg and green onions.
The tantanmen is Japan’s take on the Chinese dan dan noodle dish, and Chai’s version holds a rich, complex broth that’s nutty from the sesame tare and heated with chili paste, though it can be made without the latter. Shun prepares it with a slightly creamy, viscous pork broth, as opposed to the more common chicken broth, and the crumbled pork and char siu is excellent.
Chai’s shoyu ramen is a clean and bright bowl that’s a bit sweet and salty, made with a chicken and soy broth. The pickled bamboo shoots provide pleasant accents, and it arrives with the char siu.
Since my meals at Shun, I went to another ramen restaurant in metro Detroit that is fairly popular, and found the broth lacked the complexity and depth of Shun’s. They likely weren’t doing a 24-hour bone broth, and the extra effort shows.
Chai’s dad holds down Shun’s sushi menu, and several rolls were solid, including the Troy roll with spicy tuna, cooked salmon, tempura for crunch, and masago. The better roll, however, was the spicy yellowtail, which was a bit brighter in flavor, and also benefited from the tempura crunch. The starters we tried — karaage and chashu bun — passed muster.
Shun is an unassuming spot in the former Thuy Trang Vietnamese restaurant space. The drink selection is limited to non-alcoholic beverages and it offers products like Asian chips with exotic flavors.
During one of the visits, a group of self-described “foodie” women came in and began discussing their favorite ramen spots. They had tried every bowl of ramen in Michigan, they claimed, and the two best shops included one in Ann Arbor (presumably Slurping Turtle), and Shun. They might not be wrong.
Location Details
Shun Ramen & Sushi
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