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Co-owners and co-chefs Tatsu Aikawa and Takuya Matsumoto, the team behind hit ramen destination Ramen Tatsu-ya, has a lot in the pipeline: there is the East 6th Street expansion of the noodle shop, the South Lamar tiki bar, and lastly, the mysterious restaurant pegged for Crestview. Of the latter, Eater learned that the future restaurant’s name is Dip Dip Dip Tatsu-ya and it’s going in at 7301 Burnet Road, according to the filed TABC permit.
While the restaurant group wouldn’t disclose what the focus of the new restaurant will be, a few salient details lend some insight into what it could entail. Playing off that name, the most obvious guess is a shabu shabu restaurant. Also known as Japanese hot pot, shabu shabu denotes a style of restaurant in which the diner dips raw meats and vegetables into a shareable pot of boiling soup. The words “shabu shabu” represent the sound food makes when dipped into broth. On top of all this, the hot pot lane would make sense given Ramen Tatsu-ya has done well with Japanese food (See: ramen with two Austin restaurants and one Houston spot, izakaya with Holly restaurant Kemuri, Japanese-influenced tiki).
The name could also possibly mean that the new restaurant will be dedicated to dipping ramens, or tsukemen. In this style of restaurant, diners dip ramen noodles into separate bowls of broth. Ramen Tatsu-ya serves delicious tsukemen at all of its locations, so this would’t be a huge leap.
Finally, it could potentially mean an ice cream-focused restaurant — possibly one with soft-serve dipped into sauces and/or toppings or...maybe even some kind of Dippin’ Dots facsimile? Ramen Tatsu-ya’s brand new executive pastry chef Natalie Gazaui (former McGuire Moorman Hospitality executive pastry chef, former founding pastry chef of Eberly) recently concocted a coconut ice cream with mango pearls for South Congress Hotel’s ice cream showdown last weekend, and won. Possibly it was a test to see how that goes. Even if that’s not the cause, it’s safe to say that her desserts will be highlighted in either restaurant concept.
