63 Dean Street, London W1 (020 7437 0071). Meal for two, including wine and service: £50

Greed does a terrible marketing job on itself. It's all "I want" and "gimme" and "hurry up". Greed and delayed gratification are, like energy companies and a fair deal or Nadine Dorries and common sense, deemed to be mutually exclusive. No truly greedy person could ever have the self-control, the simple moral rectitude necessary for holding back. To be fair, if I were to argue too strenuously against this the rhetoric would fall into the column marked "protesting too much". I am not a big fan of later. I do not regard patience as a virtue but a vice. If a thing's worth doing it's worth doing now.

But greed, like a mid-career Madonna, presents itself in myriad ways. One of the best lurks on the stove in any proper kitchen. It is stock. A properly made stock is never quick or easy, whatever the crappy cookbooks with those words in the title tell you.

It takes time and effort and patience and an instinct to parsimony. For a great stock is also the product of things lazy people would throw away. It is the final resting place for the cow's moo, the chicken's cluck, the pig's oink. It is the last hurrah for a life reared solely to be eaten. It deserves to be good.

The stock at Tonkotsu is very good. It is a deep, rich, intensely life-affirming thing (albeit not for the pigs that must die in its making). The word means "pork bone" which describes the ingredients, along with piggy collagen and fat, simmered long and slow in water. Think 18 hours. The result is a cloudy liquor with a milky texture which would set into jelly if it dropped very far below room temperature. It may well be the best hangover cure known to humankind; a soothing balm which makes the lips sticky and reaches deep unto the very deepest part of even the most godless chap's soul.

At Tonkotsu, a tight, dark corridor of a Soho ramen joint where you hunker down, elbows on the table, to keep the world at bay, this stock is the star. The restaurant, in the Japanese tradition, does a small number of things very well indeed. Two of us managed to eat the vast majority of the menu. There were crunchy, garlicky pieces of cucumber to pick at while we waited for our ramen to be prepared. There were crisp-bottomed prawn and pork gyoza (dumplings) to be dredged through a sprightly dipping sauce and though not the very best in town, they avoided the usual crime of stodginess.

At a time when everybody seems to be pimping Southern fried chicken, their karaage was a master-class, the soft flesh surrounded by layer after layer of golden undulating crunch. To smear over this was their own chilli oil, an unctuous condiment full of sweet, soft-roasted garlic, dark toasted chilli notes and sesame seeds, and just the right amount of fire. It demanded to be spooned direct from pot to mouth. It's now available to buy in jars to take home, so the challenge is to find things it doesn't improve. Bacon? Check. Cheese? Check. Apple pie? Hell, why not?

And then the deep, luscious Tonkotsu ramen arrived filled with silky noodles, slices of soft pork belly, half a seasoned soft-boiled egg and with a slick of black garlic oil across the top. It is what greed is for. It is a bowl full of maternal instincts. It is the way to make a bad day good. This is what delayed gratification is for. The Tokyo spicy ramen, with its soy-sauce based pork and chicken stock, filled with pulled chilli pork, is a little more of a freshener; a wake up rather than a soothe down.

Compared to some of the places I have reviewed recently, Tonkotsu is cheap. That said there will be some who will balk at the £11 charged for the ramen. That much? For a bowl of ramen? Well, yes, that much. And I would probably agree. It is rather expensive, but at least you know your £11 will buy you something very good indeed.

Incidentally, tonkotsu is clearly the hip thing right now. The Japan Centre on Lower Regent Street is about to open a restaurant entirely dedicated to it, with prices for its ramen ranging from £8 to £10.40. Reports please.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1