There’s something familiar about Japanese noodle shop Marugame Udon.
Even though the first Marugame in Texas is opening in Carrollton on Aug. 31, it feels like you’ve been here before. There’s the line that wraps around the kitchen, with chefs theatrically making noodles and frying shrimp. There’s the breezy dining room that feels like you can drop in quickly, without spending too much. There’s the simple menu of just under 30 items.
Marugame feels like the next Pei Wei. And it might be.
Marugame president and chief strategy officer Mark Brezinski co-founded Pei Wei, a pan-Asian restaurant in 16 states. Marugame chief operating officer Pete Botonis worked at Pei Wei for 17 years. Brezinski and Botonis are not involved with Pei Wei anymore. They’re partnered with Marugame’s founding company from Japan, Toridoll Holdings Corp., and are trying to slowly stretch Marugame across the United States.
Brezinski and Botonis live in the Dallas area and are focused on North Texas first. A second Marugame at Greenville Avenue and Lovers Lane in Dallas is expected to open in November.
Pei Wei and Marugame differ in culinary approach, though they’re both fast-casual restaurants. Pei Wei serves food from all over the continent of Asia, while Marugame is focused on Japan. Its specialty is udon noodles, or chewy wheat noodles made in a meticulous process that takes 24 to 28 hours. Most of the noodle dishes at Marugame are served swimming in broth — chicken, beef or dashi — and topped with beef, chicken meatballs or fried tofu.
Brezinski says he appreciates the “versatility” of Japanese cuisine: A Japanese restaurant could serve sushi, tempura, yakitori, ramen and the like, all in the same place.
Marugame is purposefully staying away from sushi. But the company wants to offer more than noodles, which is why the menu includes tempura veggies, katsu sandos and skewers. There’s even a mac and cheese dish meant to entice kids.
Brezinski knows he’s opening a soup shop in Texas in the heat of the summer.
“Hot broth places are hard to do in Texas,” Brezinski says. “That’s why you see other options, like teriyaki bowls.”
The company originated in Japan in 2000. Brezinski and Botonis’ roles are to “tailor” the brand to an American audience, Brezinski says, drawing on their restaurant experience. After co-creating Pei Wei, Brezinski helped create Velvet Taco, Banh Shop and Super Chix and lent his expertise to the budding restaurateurs at Trinity Groves in West Dallas. Botonis helped grow Pei Wei to 200 restaurants.
Anyone interested in their past successes should be poised to see if Marugame stacks up.
“This is our modern, more contemporary, forward-thinking way of looking at Japanese food,” Brezinski says.
The allure of udon noodles
Chef Aki Matsuo learned to make udon noodles in his home country of Japan. He’s worked for Marugame for eight years.
The noodles are made with just three ingredients: flour, water and salt. Chefs flatten the dough at a station in the center of the kitchen, feeding it through a machine until each sheet reaches the proper thickness. With a quick run through the noodle cutter, each string of dough is scooped up on a wooden rod and placed in boiling water for 16 minutes.
Matsuo is looking for the perfect consistency: springy, slippery, chewy noodles. He knows it by touch and taste.
The noodles are then washed in one basin, shocked in cooler water in another. The chefs portion the noodles into little nests, which are used to make udon bowls by the order.
While customers will be drawn to the udon bowls — and they should be, since that’s the hallmark — Brezinski hopes they’re lured by other menu items like the beef skewers served with shiso salsa verde or the tempura shrimp.
The trendy katso sandos might be talkers, too; an unrelated pop-up sandwich company in Deep Ellum has seen massive success selling Japanese sandwiches this summer. And although North Texans have paid as much as $120 for a katsu sando in town, Marugame’s angle is affordability. The $5.75 Wagyu cheeseburger katso sando is one of four options.
While Marugame was not designed to have a large focus on to-go food, it will now because of the coronavirus pandemic. Company execs purchased special to-go containers that separate the noodles and the broth, which protects the integrity of the noodles. And whereas customers would ordinarily walk down a cafeteria-style buffet line and pick their own toppings for their udon bowls, chefs will do that part for now.
“Eventually, we hope we can raise the plexiglass,” Botonis says.
The future of Marugame
Brezinski picked Marugame’s address in Carrollton because it’s down the street from one of the earliest Pei Wei restaurants. He knew the neighborhood: It’s half a mile from the Dallas North Tollway, close to West Plano.
“The three things I look for are visibility, accessibility and density,” he says. “Anytime I haven’t followed that formula, I’ve failed.”
The plan is to open six Marugames in Dallas-Fort Worth in the next few years. Eventually, Brezinski and Botonis want to grow it outside of Texas and California, with both corporate-owned stores and franchises.
The corporate stores will focus on Dallas, Houston, Phoenix and parts of California; franchises will look at Denver, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other areas. Brezinski says the five-year plan involves opening up to 90 restaurants.
While a handful of restaurants have operated in California since 2011, Brezinski and his team say the Carrollton restaurant represents a new model. It’ll become their test kitchen for how the brand will evolve.
“I want to develop a prototype, but I don’t want to be prototypical,” Brezinski says. “I want to stay away from this chain mentality.”
Marugame is at 3450 E. Hebron Parkway, Carrollton. It opens Aug. 31, 2020.
