Fffffffffptt . . . Ppppfffft . . . Fpppt

Near the poker palaces and Hawaiian chop suey houses of downtown Gardena, down the street from a beauty parlor named Hairoshima and a Japanese pasta joint that sauces its spaghetti with things like corned beef and cod roe, the ramen shop Tampopo is tucked into a tiny strip mall dominated by a sushi bar and a Japanese tavern. Inside, Tampopo is cool and spare in a ST0R-catalog sort of way, all textured blue-gray surfaces and tasteful wood veneers. The plates and bowls are beautiful, roughly textured and black. A waitress obsessively fills glasses with the most delicious ice tea you’ve ever tasted.

Tampopo is presumably named for “Tampopo,” the 1987 Japanese comedy that explored the subject of noodles the way that “Behind the Green Door” explored the subject of Marilyn Chambers. The name implies a certain seriousness of purpose.

The restaurant advertises once each Saturday night on Channel 18. Its commercial includes scenes of broth being brewed, noodles being boiled, a glowing, whole-screen shot of steaming ramen that emphasizes the sheen of bamboo shoots and the sparkle of toasted garlic: a full-on, Vaseline-lens, soft-porn picture of a huge, completed bowl of soup that could bring tears to the eyes of a vegan. Friends of mine who’ve been to Tokyo more times than they’ve been to Gardena--one of whom spent the better part of his fellowship grant there determining whether Kumamoto-style noodles are in fact tastier than the kind made by ramen men from Sapporo--dream about that ad.

Once you get to Tampopo, what you hear, from all corners of the room, is this: fppppppptt . Ffffpppptt - fpppp . Ffffffffffpt. Ppppfffft . Fpppt fppppppptt fpppptt --the sound that yards of noodles make when they’re slurped out of hot broth into ravenous mouths. My first time there, I am apparently not slurping my ramen vigorously enough, because a pink-shirted man, evidently one of the owners, is standing over the table and brandishing . . . a fork.

“Even I have trouble eating noodles this way,” he says. “Perhaps a fork makes it easier to, er . . . He mimes lifting a pair of chopsticks to his mouth. “ Fffffffffptt ,” he says.

Most Japanese noodle shops do not care how you choose to eat their noodles. But most other Japanese noodle houses, at least in the United States, do not make noodles that you care to eat. Tampopo’s ramen could be the best in Southern California.

The regular broth here is rich and dark and served hot enough to hurt, a mellow pork base spiked with soy and flavored strongly with the golden bits of toasted garlic that float on top. To one side of the bowl drifts a small handful of sliced green onion; a few slices of slippery fresh bamboo shoot sit just beneath the surface. Delicious braised pork, sliced very thinly, floats toward the middle of the bowl. The noodles are firm and wheaty, catching up just enough of the broth to make them tasty without splattering on your chin, pleasantly chewy. It’s a manly bowl of soup. (The special Tampopo ramen also includes a wad of spinach, half a hard-boiled egg and a colorful pinwheel of fishcake--all stuff I can do without.)

Order the chashu ramen , and you’ll get twice as much meat, and a broth that leans more strongly towards pork. (It’s kind of a surprise, like finding that a spaghetti house has more than one kind of tomato sauce.) Try the miso ramen , and get a miso broth strong enough to subsume the garlic to something of a fruity topnote, a broth that has the powerful complexity and elusive flavor notes of a young Cote Rotie.

Tampopo also serves gyoza , great, soft pork dumplings; cold noodles topped with great masses of chicken and bean sprouts; sweetish fried noodles, yakisoba , that are no better than the kind you’ll find at any Little Tokyo lunch counter; and kushiyaki , grilled skewers of steak and shrimp and chicken that taste eerily like some new special at the Sizzler. Blackboard specials, written in Japanese only, might be seafood spaghetti or combination dinners that include noodles, cold tofu and “sushi”--one time it was a smoky combination of rice and grilled salmon that tasted like a good salmon-skin hand roll.

The rice is good, but it’s the noodles that are worth the lecture in etiquette.

Tampopo, 2015 Redondo Beach Blvd., Gardena, (213) 323-7882. Open daily, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Lot parking. Beer and wine. Dinner for two, food only, $8-$12.