My Tokyo Ramen Adventure
The ups and downs of falling in love with Ramen
I have had a love-hate relationship with ramen. The hate part is mostly based on my stubbornness, clumsiness and arrogance.
Stubbornness? In the beginning it wasn’t a love-hate relationship, it was more of a feeling-indifferent-at-best-but-tending-towards-dislike relationship. I just didn’t get what all the fuss was about. Many of my friends loved ramen. For me, the soup was never right, the noodles were boring, the meat was too fatty, the bamboo was too chewy, always too much, difficult to eat and overall the atmosphere of the typical ramen place wasn’t too welcoming.
Clumsiness? When I eat ramen, they are all over me. I look like I dipped my head into the bowl. I eat ramen, they stick to my face instead of gliding elegantly into my mouth. Oh, and not to mention the mess on my clothes. I try to wear black clothes when I go for ramen but I cannot always be prepared. And then the soup is all over me and I start envying my two year old nephew who always gets a bib for eating. I have to concentrate all my willpower on not making a mess of me which leaves me quite unrelaxed.
Arrogance? This is where the love part starts, though it is not as obvious. I had some fantastic ramen. Ramen, I wanted to bathe in (well I kinda did, see the part on clumsiness). Ramen, I wanted to be reborn in. Ramen, I thought were so good I didn’t want to eat because this would mean making them disappear. The problem is, once you have ramen that you kinda really, really like, others are just not as good. Which is totally normal though, because every ramen is different but sometimes I am just like “This might be ok for you, but not for me. I went to this great place, and this just can’t compare”. Arrogance.
When did I exactly start liking ramen?
It was in summer 2010 during my exchange year in Kyoto. My university exchange year was coming to an end and I managed to have ramen only once or twice in the past year when I got forced by friends. Kyoto has its own Ramen Road , a street with one ramen restaurant after the other. The Ramen Road is in the north of Kyoto, between Shugakuin Station and Ichijoji Station on the Higashi Oji Dori. That area is very local and except for the Shugakuin Villa, there aren’t many famous sights but it is a very popular area among students. Friends of mine had been going occasionally to one certain ramen place, so shortly before I went back to my home country, I could finally be convinced to go with them to Takayasu (中華そば高安http://takayasuramen.com/). We arrived and as with many popular ramen places, we had to queue. Great, now I even had to queue for those damn noodles. My friends reassured me that Takayasu is different from regular ramen and that the interior is rather unique. I still wasn’t convinced. After a not too long wait we got seated and I had time to take in the surrounding. The whole interior was white, futuristic looking — totally different from the normal ramen place. On the wall there were several TVs hanging where episodes of Tom & Jerry or some cat anime were running. I took the Karaage Teishoku like everyone else, where ramen, a plate of karaage and rice was included.
The owner was a very interesting and open-minded guy who was always running around with a headphone. Looked a little bit weird because the place wasn’t that big that you seemed to need it but anyway, it added to the quirkiness. The ramen came. The karaage came. And I was transformed. The soup was rather white and milky and I just wanted to drink it in one go. I loved it. And oh, did I love the karaage. Big, crispy and with a little bit of seasoning. And after I finished the noodles I would pour the rice into the left-over soup. My first trip to Takayasu ended with me having the worst stomachache of my life because of overeating. It was still worth it.
From that day on I was OK with ramen. Just OK. Because after all, it was just Takayasu I liked so far.
Years passed, I moved back to my home country and back again to Japan. Every time I was in Japan I paid a visit to Takayasu. I must say, it looks a little bit rundown now but I still like them nonetheless. When I went there two years ago with my boyfriend, the owner shouted “Germans!” upon seeing us. We just assume, he met so many foreigners that he can now guess the nationality by appearance (and to be honest, Germans are easily recognizable although we didn’t wear Jack Wolfskin jackets). We talked a lot with him and he would repeatedly say that my boyfriend had to marry me and come back next year with me as his wife. Little did he know that my boyfriend would actually propose two days later and we did came back one year later as man and wife. So of course, Takayasu holds a special place in my heart.
Last year I moved back to Japan for the third time, this time to Tokyo. And this time I decided to go on a ramen adventure. I found many places I really liked and some places that were over-the-top hyped but I actually didn’t like so much.
Tsuta Ramen near Sugamo Station is unique as it was awarded with a Michelin star while still serving a ramen bowl for under 1,000 Yen (http://www.tsuta.com/). Where else can you eat a Michelin Star dish for so little money? I tried once or twice to get in but was never able to get a ticket. Among Tokyoites and tourists alike it is a popular spot, so especially on the weekends you might have to go there early to buy tickets to come back at a later time (you are allocated a time to enter). The time I finally managed to get in was on a Thursday just half an hour before closing time when I only had to queue for 5 minutes. I had their Char Siu Shoyu Soba which comes with 4 slices of barbecued pork, bamboo shoot, leek, truffle oil and their home-made soba noodles. There are only a couple of counter seats so wherever you sit you are able to watch the mesmerizing experience of Michelin starred ramen being prepared. There were around four people simultaneously preparing the bowls and everyone was in charge of a specific task. The guy in charge of the noodles looked like he was just holding his first-born child — so careful and with so much sincerity. I would say that was already half of the experience. How about the taste, because that’s what counts right? Well, to be honest, I wouldn’t come back for a second time. People might want to kill me for saying this because according to the online reviews the taste is godsend-like but for me it was just OK. Maybe I expected too much. But I also figured out I am maybe just not so much into shoyu ramen(exceptions can be made).
In the parallel street to Tsuta Ramen, one of my favourite ramen restaurants is located. I actually found it by mistake because I couldn’t get into Tsuta but was too hungry to search any further. Menya Imamura ( 麺や いま村, no HP) looks like the total opposite of Tsuta. Whereas Tsuta looks like your typical, slightly run-down neighborhood ramen place, Menya has a rather elegant interior with fitting background music. If there was space I wouldn’t be surprised to find a piano in the corner. The guests also seem to be different; to me the typical Menya Imamura guest looked like they visited some art gallery before coming to Menya — a little bit chic, a little bit intellectual, a little bit Yoko Ono. I always order their signature dish — Shoyu Ramen with a soft boiled egg. The soup is chicken based and the meat is chicken grilled on charcoal. It was so delicious that I didn’t want to eat it at first. But of course I did and several times I came back and I haven’t regretted it so far. Their menu is rather limited and they only have two types of ramen — Soy sauce and salt based.
To decide on which ramen place to discover next I started using the Ramen Database (https://ramendb.supleks.jp/). It is only in Japanese but even with a limited knowledge of the Japanese language it is relatively easy to navigate. You can check the best ramen places nationwide, according to your city/neighborhood or according to a specific broth. Or you just browse the map and get totally amazed by all the ramen places in your neighborhood.
The leading tonkotsu place in all of Japan according to the database is Hakata Nagahama Ramen Tanaka in Adachi ward in Tokyo (博多長浜らーめん 田中商店 https://www.tanaka-shoten.net/). The place is for Tokyo-standards a pain to reach — 15 to 20 minutes by walk from the nearest train station in the middle of nowhere. You will walk through a really residential area with not much going around and once you get to the place you might have to queue, even during weekdays. The good thing is, the restaurant is not your typical tiny ramen place but actually has a few tables next to the counter seats so you might not have to wait too long. They even provide an English menu. Needless to say, the ramen was really good. The broth was just right and you could adjust the taste to your liking with some garlic or other spices. The restaurant is kind of in the middle of nowhere but don’t worry. They also opened places in Asakusa, Kagurazaka, Odaiba, Akihabara and Sendai.
Rokutsuki is another high scored tonkotsu based ramen that can be found close to Asakusabashi (ろく月 http://ameblo.jp/men-rokuzuki/). Apparently, they even got some tonkotsu award in 2014 and they are known for their additive-free chicken broth. Their signature dish is tokusei ramen, a bowl of ramen with some rather unusual veggies, namely asparagus, okra and baby corn. The ramen is lovely and so are the owners. We went there in a really big group and they quickly got us two extra chairs out of the storage room so that we could all fit at the counter. We had a baby with us which was crying badly (I bet it was because it wasn’t allowed to eat ramen yet) and the owners were super nice and told us not to worry because they also had small kids. Having nice ramen is one thing, but eating at such a welcoming place was another bonus and I will definitely come back.
I realized I have become rather difficult to please. I am no food connoisseur, yet alone a ramen expert. I like something or I don’t — it is that simple. When I went for tsukemen in Asakusa a couple of days ago I realized who was partly responsible for it (Tsukemen have become quite popular in the last years — ramen and broth are separated and you dip the noodles in the now slightly richer and thicker broth). Menya Itto currently ranks as the number 2 nationwide according to the Ramen Database. It has a score of 99.67 and is therefore No 1 in Tokyo (№1 nationwide is Tomita in Chiba Prefecture’s Matsudo City, which is actually not that far from Tokyo city center). I went to Menya Itto on a weekday around 7pm and had to queue for roughly an hour (麺屋 一燈 http://www.menya-itto.com/). And oh they take their queue very seriously. Don’t even think about going there to queue and reserve seats for your friends who gonna join you later. Not possible. Every person who queues gets one seat. You queue and at some point they tell you to get a ticket from the vending machine and you just pass it to them and then there is more queuing. It seems like you always have to queue for everything in Tokyo and often it is not worth it. But oh my, Menya Itto’s signature tsukemen where a revelation. Maybe not for everyone but definitely for me and my friends. Some in our group ordered normal ramen and although it wasn’t bad they regretted not taking the tsukemen once they tried it. The soup is based on chicken broth and five kinds of fish/seafood. It is incredibly rich in taste and if it is too rich for you, you can water it down a little bit with some extra broth. I only did it in the end to increase the amount of soup. They recently opened another restaurant in Bangkok but if you are not living in Thailand, the Menya Itto close to Shin-Koiwa Station is your only chance of tasting this piece of heaven. I must admit, that it is not really fair to compare Menya Itto’s tsukemen with other restaurants’ ramen. Tsukemen is not ramen. But I am weak and those heavenly tsukemen are always in the back of my head whispering “eat me, eat me”.
I just realized recently that the Ramen Database cannot always be trusted. It is obvious that rankings can be manipulated and not everyone likes the same but the disappointment I had a couple of weeks ago really took me by surprise. I went to a tonkotsu ramen place with a score of 95 close to my working place. The ramen were a disaster. Super thick noodles, the egg was completely boiled through and the soup…I just focused on the noodles and left the soup aside but at some point I couldn’t even finish the noodles and just left. Lesson learned.
Ramen has become a part of my life in Japan. I am trying more and more places and when I travel to a new city I check out their ramen restaurants. I also learned how to deal with the clumsiness part. I am still soaked when I get out of a restaurant but at least I know which detergent gets out the soup stains.
Next stop on my ramen agenda is going to be Tomita (とみ田 http://www.tomita-cocoro.jp/), the nationwide №1 on the Ramen Database. They annoyingly close around 3pm which is a little bit inconvenient for people who work and I am not that desperate to wake up early on a Saturday to queue. Maybe I just take a day off and queue during the week. But people would call that desperate as well I guess.
Ramen has become so much more than just a simple noodle soup for roughly 800 yen. It’s about the taste that is nowhere the same. It’s about the curiosity and excitement that comes with the first spoon of soup. It’s about the people who prepare them with such devotion that I simply love watching them. And it’s about the memories I connect with those places.
