Bowls from Tokyo (2/2)
Continued from part 1
Hopuken Main Branch
I’d never heard of this shop before, but the big line up and the bright yellow decor caught my eye while I was wandering around Kichijoji. Nothing really special at all about the bowl though, I have no idea why so many people were lining up for it. I guess their special chili powder thing was nice, but everything else, especially the noodles) fell flat. Better off going to Bubuka down the road.
Soushinmenan Kissui
A bowl I’ve been wanting to try for the longest time. The soup is made of sanma no shioyaki (grilled salted sanma.) Grilled sanma is one of my favourite foods here, and I thought I would love the bowl, but it actually wasn’t as enjoyable as I thought. The soup is heavier on the fishier taste of the fish than the salty, smoky taste. Everything else was good, but not spectacular. The shop itself is awesome, however and it’s definitely worth a visit. All of my friends liked it, so I might be the odd exception.
Rokurinsha TOKYO
The last bowl of 2011, and it was a big one (more in a metaphorical sense than the size itself.) I lived 5 minutes from the original shop of Rokurinsha in Osaki, but I never did manage to go for a bowl there. I do remember seeing the line up of people going around the shop and onto the sidewalk nearby, so its popularity is undebatable. I would have preferred trying it in the original shop, but the Tokyo Station branch just turned out to be more convenient (not to mention the original shop would always be closed by 1 or 2pm from being out of soup.) With its one hour and three-part line up, this shop really deserves a post of its own, but I will spare you the details. Instead, about the ramen. Well I am not a big fan of tsukemen, but this was indeed tsukemen. The noodles were definitely more noteworthy than the soup, they’ve got this undescribable bite to them that I’ve never experienced before. Really I could’ve just passed on the soup and slurped on those noodles by themselves. Anyway, these were my toshikoshi ramen and the noodles were long and thick as hell, so I hope that means 2012 will be a good year.
Kyushu Ramen Tsuyamaru
The first bowl of 2012, at a tonkotsu joint in Nakano Sun-Mall (the shopping arcade before Nakano Broadway.) I have happy memories of slurping down these noodles in bliss back in my Tokyo days, but I wasn’t really in the mood for ramen this night, which was unusual. I guess it’s a pretty standard tonkotsu bowl, with the soup being a little thicker (by the bottom of the bowl you can feel the gritty bits of pork bones in your mouth—very pleasant actually.)
That’s it. Overall, this trip reconfirmed the fact that Tokyo is the best place in the world to eat noodles, for its variety and availability. I have to say though Hokkaido is right up there when it comes to quality of the bowls, but it’s just too goddamned hard to get to the ramen shops from my little inaka town. Oh well.
