油そば専門店 浜そば - Hamasoba, Yushima

浜そばスペシャル - Hamasoba Special, ￥730

   Hamasoba may have the smallest shopfront I have ever seen. However, with the ubiquity of smartphones and applications, or アプリ these days, you don't have to worry about missing it. Just switch on your GPS and you will be directed to the nearest ramen shop from your current location. Being technically challenged though, I remembered walking past this one on my way to another ramen shop. Interestingly you face the wall when eating with your back to the kitchen. Well, not particularly interesting...

    No soup to be had here - Just some very firm noodles and a bunch of other stuff. It was quite a good, no-frills bowl. Definitely the type that would go down well after a bit of a drinking session.

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らーめん神下 大喜 - Daiki, Yushima

特製醤油らーめん - Special Shoyu Ramen, ￥980

    Now that I'm in the middle of a bit of a shio ramen phase, the next obvious step would be to see if I could find another shop in northern Tokyo (lazy) that could match one of my new favourite stores, Hidamali. And so it was off to Yushima, the area full of late-night drinking dens for thirsty salarymen just on the other side of Ueno Park, to join the queue at Daiki.

    One of the staff members came to check our tickets while we were waiting and, luckily for our party of two, we were told there was just enough soup for us and the others behind us would have to re-order. Unfortunately a few minutes later there would only be enough for one. So I decided to go with the special shoyu ramen.
    As you can imagine, the constant line keeps them busy...

    My wait was accompanied by the dulcet tones of Bette Midler's Wind Beneath My Wings which seemed an odd choice. However, as the song seemed to drag on forever, I noticed that it was on a 30 second loop. A peculiar choice of music that these poor souls may have to tolerate all day. As long as it doesn't affect the the ramen....
   The last bowl of shio for the day...

   And then my shoyu came too.

     The shio ramen is the store's recommended dish so I was a little disappointed to have to settle for the shoyu, but it turned out to be a pretty handy consolation. A nice dashi flavoured soup full of surprises.

    Wontons! They're not surprises now... Nor are they if you bother to read the menu...

    Overall it was a very solid bowl of ramen, but I don't know whether I would wait another 20 minutes in a line only to have to endure Bette Midler again.

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Daiki Homepage

麺や ひだまり - Hidamali, Sendagi

味玉和風塩らぁ麺 - Shio Ramen with Egg, ￥780

   A little off the beaten path and just down the way from one of my favourite not-so-well-known areas of Tokyo, Yanaka, is the pretty recently opened Hidamali. As the weather is cooling down it's obviously a good time for ramen. As such, the ramen magazines have hit the stands and in trying to offer a little variety I thought I would hit up a new store with a first for this blog - shio ramen. (salt)
   Being a new store in a quiet area on a rainy night, there weren't a great deal of customers, although it has a pleasant atmosphere inside and was definitely favourable to the rain. It's certainly not your average dimly-lit ramen store.

  
   And you can stay for a drink...

   or not...

   Shio is often the forgotten type of ramen with the recent boom (by which I mean a few years before I had ever eaten ramen) of tonkotsu gyokai tsukemen with flavour bursting from the bowl and double soups and all the new innovations one could imagine. Shio is thought to be the least interesting which leads some to think it's boring.

    But this one doesn't seem to be...

    Everything about this bowl of ramen was great. From one of the most flavourful eggs I've had to the light to the peppery flavoured soup, there was nothing boring about this at all. In fact, the soup is so complex that it is made from four different kinds of salt. I dare you to be able to tell the difference though.

    If you've still got some room left head upstairs and have a drink at a cool little bar where the menu is accompanied by the owner's reviews of recent films.

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Hidamali Homepage

らーめんいっとく - Ittoku, Sendagi

鶏白湯玉子入 - Toripaitan with Egg ￥850

    It's nice to know that some visits to a ramen store can still can be a spontaneous decision and that a camera phone will suffice. I don't lug around a big SLR or anything, but it certainly doesn't fit in my pocket. And so it was wandering around our neighbourhood that we happened upon Ittoku. We had seen it before as it is just a few hundred metres from Tetsu, but we were not completely sure what they had on offer. However, one thing was for certain - They like cats...

    Every kind of ramen on their menu is made with chicken, from the obvious toripaitan and gyokai blends, to the less obvious chicken tantanmen. With all these chicken choices in front of we decided to go with perhaps the most chicken-y of them all the toripaitan.

    Toripaitan isn't really the most popular ramen style in Japan - I've mentioned it to Japanese who haven't ever heard over it, but it should definitely be on your to-do list. This particular bowl tasted like a creamy chicken and corn (it IS in there somewhere) soup and was finished off with some ground pork, a couple of soy-drenched menma and some daikon sprouts, kaiware.

    I rather enjoyed the bowl and the fact that it wasn't so greasy and great for a hangover means I'll probably be back. The only problem with this being Burari, a shop just a little closer to home.

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Tetsu, Nishi Nippori

夜つけ麺, Evening Tsukemen ￥800
  
     The first time I visited Tetsu was after 3 days in bed with norovirus and I feel I can say with some authority that ramen is not the meal you want to have first up after 3 days on electrolyte drinks, jelly and water. Luckily for me though the first visit didn't involve any waiting around outside in the cold.... Unlike this visit.

    Tetsu is another of the seemingly endless list of popular tonkotsu gyokai ramen shops that populate Tokyo although this one seems to be more popular than most. (It is ranked in the Top 10 on the Ramen Database!) The line wasn't so bad - maybe a 15 minute wait, but it was much worse by the time we left which seems odd for a Sunday night in a quiet part of town. They also have a few other stores around Tokyo (Roppongi, Shinagawa, etc)

     The shop is so small that there isn't any room for the ticket machine inside so be sure to grab a ticket before you get in line. As you can see, only half of the machine is lit up. This is because Tetsu has a different menu for daytime and nighttime and their most popular tonkotsu gyokai tsukemen is only available during the day and in the evening they offer a chicken and fish flavoured soup.

     I have to say that I'm pretty happy that this place is close to home since it is amazing. The soup has a quite complex flavour without being overpowering or too strong, and it also manages to stay at nice consistency without becoming gritty. Sometimes you just don't need an egg... Luckily we also get instructions on how to eat our tsukemen... Just in case.

    Did you read closely? Shwaaaaa! Once you've finished your noodles and want to finish your soup off there's a problem. The soup is not hot enough anymore so you can ask for a piping hot stone to put in and heat your soup back up... Genius!

    You can then thin the soup out a little with the boiling water that is on the counter (Please don't confuse this one with the drinking water!) and enjoy a really refreshing soup with just a small hint of yuzu... Wow!

     Tetsu is well worth a visit - It's a ramen store that offers something a little different from the others, albeit a stone that heats your soup up, but it certainly doesn't feel like a gimmick. I'll be back because it's some of the best ramen I've had in Tokyo!

    But be aware of what you might have to contend with.....

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Tetsu Homepage