赤丸かさね味 - Akamaru (Tonkotsu Ramen), ￥850
With my father deciding to brave the aftershocks and visit Tokyo, it was only natural that I would take him out to enjoy a bowl of ramen (or two) and there aren't many places better to go than Ippudo if you're only in town for a short time. This place is spreading the joy of ramen around the world these days with stores in New York City and Singapore. We were in Ueno so we went to that store... And lucky for us it was open.
The usual lunchtime crowd of businessmen perched themselves around the large communal table that we were seated at but more interestingly there were a few freebies on the table which would surely be gobbled down by every single customer if this weren't Japan. We helped ourselves to some spicy moyashi while we waited for our ramen.
Ippudo originated in Fukuoka and offers us 3 different varieties of the renowned hakata tonkotsu ramen that emerged from the same area. I've only tried 2 types there - The red (赤) and the white (白) - and decided to go with what I know best...
Ippudo is one of the most popular and well-known chains in Japan with good reason. There really is nothing wrong with this ramen at all - The soup has a really rich, strong pork flavour and is only slightly spicy and it is a pretty decent serving. There isn't a great deal of chashu but they're not really skimping on it at the same time. And I'm pretty sure there weren't any octopuses weren't harmed here either - just some garlic oil. The thin hakata style noodles are great when you really want to shovel it in too.
Not that it really needs it, but one of my favourite activities at Ippudo is to add some extra garlic myself and here we don't just scoop some crushed garlic out of a jar...
I've never seen anyone take these away to be cleaned but they're always immaculate when I want to use them. They've got a pretty unique tipping system too, but I was a little suspicious of the salarymen around so I declined.
No comments:
Post a Comment