あっ晴れ Appare: guts and glory

Another trip to Nagoya late last year meant another couple ramen notches on the ever-tightening belt. This occasion was a real doozy - a trip to Kinki prefecture's take on the artery-clogging bowl known as Jiro-style (not to be confused with JJ-style), Appare.

The chain had a summer promotion where if you ordered at every one of their nine shops in July, you'd receive a coupon book of 50 free bowls of ramen. Sounds like a deal, but some of the shops are located in out-of-the-way locations in Aichi, Gifu, and Mie, meaning you need a car and an iron gut to work through those shops.

Ramen (680yen)

The ramen is worthy of the Jiro-kei mantle, with the typical mountain of bean sprouts and cabbage on top, the rich and salty pork broth on bottom, and the thick noodles (shipped from Asakusa's regular Jiro-kei supplier Kaikarou) comprising the fat middle. Senrigan is still the best version of this bowl, in my book, but Appare is good enough.

The mazesoba here is a nice alternative to the overly salty bone broth; you can add cheese, raw egg, chopped onions, extra back fat, extra oil, extra garlic, and mix it all up, Junk Garage style.

Mazesoba with extra egg (880yen)

A big place, as per the standard with shops in and around Nagoya.

Aichi-ken, Obu-shi, Yokonecho-maeda 50-1
Closest stn: Obu (30-minute walk or 10-minute taxi ride)

Open from 11am-11pm (closed from 4-530pm on weekdays)

Hearts

つけ麺 丸和 Maruwa: the little things

I'm running out of adjectives (and headlines) to describe well-prepared bowls of thick, tonkotsu-gyokai tsukemen. This one is delectable.

Maruwa tsukemen (830yen)

Maruwa's thick pork porridge is distinguished by the piping hot stone bowl its served in, keeping the soup hot til the very end, a problem with most tsukemen broths that become lukewarm by the last few slurps. The soup comes out bubbling and frothy, even if its a little too sweet.

The noodles are topped with bits of dried nori, which is another nice touch that you're more likely to find on a plate of soba noodles.

When every shop is serving such solid versions of the same bowl, it's the little things that can set you apart. Oh, and being located steps away from the train station - a rarity for good Nagoya shops - is another plus.

Aichi-ken, Nagoya-shi, Nakagawa-ku, Haruta 1-150-1
Closest stn: Haruta

Open from 11am-2pm and 6-9pm (closed Tuesdays)

Hearts

柴崎亭 Shibasakitei: limitless

Hearts wanted to eat a pure, old school shoyu ramen, but both of us have really wanted to come to this all-natural, preservative-free ramen shop for a long time. We expected not much of a wait since it's outside of central Tokyo, but when we arrived 10 minutes before the shop opened there was already a line of over a dozen customers. Expect to wait about an hour, but this is a pleasant area with nice obachan grandmothers walking around.

The menu here is very reasonable - the main ramen costs only 500 yen, and the deluxe (tokusei) or wonton versions are only around 850 yen. I ordered the wonton chuka soba...

Wonton chuka soba (850yen)

...and Hearts ordered the gentei limited bowl. When Hearts asked what the limited was, the master curtly replied, "The limited is the limited" (限定は限定です). This confused us, but apparently detailed info for the limited bowls are tweeted via their Twitter account ever week. So the limited is more of a menu item for regulars.

The regular shoyu is beyond description. The bowl is beautiful and, while dark, belies a very tender flavor. The wontons are marvelous, condensed umami; really my style. I personally think Shibasakitei might have even better wonton ramen than Tantantei or Yakumo (imho of course - apologies to fans of those shops!).

Hearts limited bowl was a bonjiri, or chicken butt, ramen, paired with a side bowl of chopped chicken butt over rice. Even though this was a shoyu ramen, the taste was totally different than the shoyu, with a deeper, roasted chicken flavor.

Gentei/limited (1000yen)

The spicy tare was GREAT

The master makes multiple limited bowls EVERY WEEK, which is definitely a first for us and shows how experimental and passionate he is with his ramen. He confused us with his off-putting attitude at first, but he is actually very polite and, importantly, extremely careful and particular with his work considering his large stock of menu options.

We'll definitely be back soon.

Chofu, Nishi-tsutsujigaoka 3-25-52
Closest stn: Tsutsujigaoka

Open from 11am-2pm and 6-1130pm (closes at 930pm on weekends and holidays)

Lum

維新 Ishin: persistence

We tried to come out here several times, but were always turned away by some random occurrence. One time, their floor was apparently leaking to the basement shop below and they had to close for a few days for repairs.

Don't let obstacles deter you. Ishin is a fantastic addition to the growing list of refined shoyu bowls of ramen in Tokyo. Get the special (特) shoyu ramen, which comes with a half-boiled egg, extra pork and chicken chashu, and wontons. Always. Get. The. Wontons.

Tokushoyu ramen (980yen)

Everything in this bowl is excellent, and the slightly thinner-than-usual noodles are elegance embodied in ramen form.

The lunch special is a grilled chicken bowl for a breezy 150 yen. That's a ton of high-quality food for roughly a ten spot. Sometimes I hesitate to put any of this stuff online, for fear that my favorite shops will be flooded by rude tourists, but we trust our fellow Ramen Lovers to be courteous and well-behaved slurpers.

Expect a line at all times of the day, especially now that foreigners have discovered it with its inclusion in the latest Michelin Bib Gourmand list.

Tokyo, Shinagawa-ku, Kamiosaki 3-4-1
Closest stn: Meguro

Open from 1130am-3pm and 6-10pm (closed on Sundays)

Hearts

中華そば こてつ Kotetsu: the locals

Full disclosure: Hearts and I nearly got in a fight over my writing about our new favorite shop in Shimokitazawa. We've been here way too many times, and he tried to convince me to keep it under wraps as our little sanctuary, but then freaking Ramen Adventures wrote about it, so I figured it was time to share it with the world.

Tokusei chuka soba (850yen)

I was craving this kind of ramen in Shimokitazawa. The owner is young and very nice. Here, you can enjoy old school shoyu ramen for a very reasonable price. The shop trends toward the more modern interpretation of an ultra clean shoyu broth using a mix of niboshi, pork, and vegetables, but with none of the funky sardine smell. Every time I sip this soup, I'm filled with tender emotion as it penetrates my body. The shio ramen, by the way, is also excellent.

Tokusei shio ramen (850yen)

The noodles are silky and have a good balance of chewiness.

And the chashu! How does he create such good chashu? I should ask him directly. The style of chashu is similar to my beloved (and shuttered) Metoki, prepared slightly raw and lean like roast beef. The juices will flow into your mouth with every bite as you feel the umami. Also, the wontons were made with great shops like Yakumo in mind, so they are also tasty.

I still can't believe the regular ramen here is only 650 yen. On top of that, the special tokusei (pictured) has wontons, egg, and extra chashu for just a couple hundred yen more. Usually these bowls are 1000 yen+ these days, so it's a small miracle that Kotetsu can provide such high quality without passing much of it on to the customer.

I've tried my hardest, but I don't think I can express in words how much I love Kotetsu. This is what I'm looking for when I go hunting for ramen, and I pray for their continued success.

Tokyo, Setagaya-ku, Kitazawa 2-39-13
Closest stn: Shimokitazawa

Open from 1130am-3pm and 5-1030pm (closed Tuesdays)

Lum

蔭山樓 Kageyamaro: as good as it gets

It seems like we're always writing about the "best tori paitan we've ever had" on this blog. But tori paitan just seems to be getting better and better - creamier, less greasy, and with greater chicken essence. Maybe there's some shoyu ramen and tsukemen fatigue in Tokyo, but more and more, chefs are trying to coax max flavor from high-quality birds, and this is resulting in better and better chicken noodle soups.

Kageyamaro, with branches in Ebisu and Jiyugaoka, is the newest standard bearer. 

Tori paitan (980yen)

Reminiscent of the now defunct Usagi Shokudo, they serve a refined bowl that is topped with greens and comes accompanied by various garnishments, including a lemon tucked underneath the bowl.

Man, is this stuff good. The details here - the strings of steamed chicken, the various textures of the greens, the umami-rich egg, the squirts of lemon midway through - all give the right accents and zest to the creamy soup and soft, thick noodles.

They give you a scoop of rice to soak up that leftover chicken, too.

It's also, at 1280 yen for a dinner bowl, a little expensive. Kageyamaro is a full-service Chinese restaurant, and your fellow slurpers will likely be idle wives of rich businessmen ordering shark fin soup, so if you just want to chow down on tori paitan (or the delicious tantanmen with hazelnuts), lunch is the better option. This is, for now, as good as it gets.

Tokyo, Shibuya-ku, Ebisu 3-2-2

Closest stn: Ebisu

Open from 1130am-3pm and 6-10pm

Hearts

百年本舗 Hyakunen Honpo: one hundred years of happiness

Super belated Happy New Year for readers of Ramen Love! Sorry for the lack of updates these past couple of months. A move and many other things kept us busy. But we never stopped eating ramen, so please stay tuned.

Where do you take guests who are visiting from abroad in Tokyo? There are so many places to go, but Akihabara is one of the best options, as its the mecca of electricity, games, and anime. There are a lot of good ramen options, but Yanagi-san's (Menya Sou) newest shop deserves its own special trip.

Niku-jiru chuka soba (780yen)

Niku-jiru chuka soba shio (780yen)

This is an old school chuka soba, imbued with niku jiru, or "meat juice," which in this case means very high quality pork. The shop uses pork chuck in place of the typical pork belly, and the chefs serve it thinly-sliced and with a bit of pink.

Just thinking of this mound of meat makes my mouth water. The shio was also solid, but I gotta rave about the shoyu. The soup is darker and sweeter than your typical shoyu ramen, going really well with the silky noodles and thinly-sliced, fluffy pork. You can customize your bowl with tableside garlic and ginger, which works great to provide some sharpness and depth to the initial sweetness. I love bowls like this where you can enjoy changing the taste until the very last slurp.

While the highlight is the ramen, the Honpo also serves great sides - bowls of rice with that heavenly pork, a Singaporean-style Hainan chicken rice...

...and even some desserts! This ice cream dish was paired with flat noodle-like mochi.

If you're an indecisive person, Yanagi-san provides you with whatever options to suit your mood. His newest shop translates to "A Hundred-Years Headquarters," and here's hoping that it's around serving happy people in a hundred years, even if Hearts and I are long dead by then.

Tokyo, Chiyoda-ku, Sotokanda 3-8-9
Closest stn: Akihabara

Open from 11am-10pm

Lum

博多ラーメン ばりこて Barikote: porco rosso

How have I not come here before? Barikote is among the handful of best Hakata ramen shops in Tokyo. On a rain-soaked typhoon night, this was the perfect post-drinking ramen.

Hakata ramen (650yen)

Appropriately priced, this is Hakata ramen at its finest - cheap, quick, stinky soul food. Barikote's broth is cloudy and white, made from 100% pork bones boiled for over 16 hours. No cheating with fish soup, chicken, or vegetables here. Surprisingly, this broth is mellow and easy to drink, packing all of the punch of a thick pork stew with none of the heaviness.

The noodles are fantastic, handmade and shipped in from the main shop in Nagahama, Kyushu every single day.

I recommend eating the noodles and drinking only a minimal amount of the soup. Then, order a half or full kaedama 替え玉 (extra portion of noodles) for a mere 50 or a 100 yen more. Trick out your second helping with the standard spicy takana greens, pickled pink ginger, and copious amounts of grated garlic and sesame seeds.

Maybe shops like this are a dime a dozen in Hakata, but Barikote's pure, piggy, and fulfilling tonkotsu is a rarer beast in Tokyo.

Tokyo, Suginami-ku, Koenji Minami 1-30-15

Closest stn: Higashi-Koenji

Open from 1130am-3pm and 530pm-2am (closed Mondays)

Hearts

らぁ麺 やまぐち辣式 Yamaguchi Ratsushiki: salt n' pepper

Sometimes, I'm tempted not to blog about my favorite ramen shops, lest they become overrun by tourists. Yamaguchi's latest shop falls under such consideration. This is Yamaguchi's second shop after his shoyu shop in Takadanobaba, one of Hearts two or three favorites in the city.

"Ratsushiki" is difficult to translate exactly into English, but might best be defined as "sharp style." This is ramen with bite. They only serve a mapotofu-inspired mazesoba...

Mara mazesoba with small rice (800yen)

...and a shio ramen (always get the wontons).

Shio ramen with shrimp wontons (930yen)

First off, the shio. This is not a side endeavor for Yamaguchi-san. The soup - beautiful and golden - has an addictive quality that makes one not want to put the ladle down. You could call this ramen "crack style." The flavor of the ingredients used to derive the dashi - seaweed, scallops - is very strong, but work in harmony. This soup could be served in an expensive Japanese kappo dinner. I doubt I'll taste a better ramen than this one in 2016.

The mara mazesoba was a totally different beast. Yamaguchi-san told us that he loves mapotofu and was inspired to make a ramen out of it. Lots of Chinese-style diners serve mabo ramen, but he found that the tofu made the bowl too watery, so his mabo mazemen eliminates the tofu for a pure umami experience. The spicy paste, numbing pepper, and combination of ground and chopped pork provides a counterpunch to the refined shio. Despite being spicy, the flavor is never overwhelming, and you can taste the quality of the bowl until the very last slurp. For those who want a less intense and more creamy experience, add the onsen tamago soft-cooked egg. Definitely order a side of white rice to make sop up the last remaining bits of sauce.

I thought Yamaguchi-san only made shoyu ramen, but his expanded offerings blew my mind. The only thing I wish is that his shops were closer to my home and work.

Tokyo, Koto-ku, Toyocho 4-6-3
Closest stn: Toyocho

Open from 1130am-3pm and 530-9pm (closed Thursdays)

Lum

麺屋 一楽 Ichiraku: stay with you

Ichiraku is one of the thickest bowls of chicken sludge in the city. Made from whole chickens boiled for hours on end by the solitary chef of the shop, its a rich bowl with collagen character.

Noko tori paitan (770yen)

Open until 1am on weekdays and located about 30 seconds from Iidabashi station, this is post-drinking tori paitan if you have the stomach for it. The broth is bubbling when its plopped in front of you and the medium-width noodles are stringy and chewy. The whole thing looks and feels a little wet and sloppy, and your lips will be glistening with grease and oil and chicken fat after about two minutes.

But you'll finish it, especially after a late summer night of beers. You might regret not ordering an extra helping of the thinly sliced, fatty chicken chashu, and you also might regret eating the whole thing an hour later. Ichiraku's thick paitan will stay with you, for better and worse.

Tokyo, Chiyoda-ku, Fujimi 2-3-14
Closest stn: Iidabashi

Open from 11am-1am (closes at 9pm on weekends)

Hearts

煮干しつけ麺 宮本 Miyamoto: high fidelity

Rounding out our tsukemen September is one of the brightest new shops that opened last year. Miyamoto is yet another high-quality tonkotsu-gyokai, this one coming from a master who trained at the highly regarded Itto.

Gokuko (ultra thick) niboshi tsukemen (830yen)

The signature tsukemen is a broth of rich and briny sludge. What separates Miyamoto from other refined tsukemen is the concentration on gyokai over tonkotsu. Some people might not go for it, but this is a nice alternative to the pork-intensive dipping soups of most Tokyo bowls. The broth is intensely dense, maybe the thickest standard tsukemen broth we've ever had, but surprisingly slurpable due to the lack of meat concentration.

The noodles, supplied by Itto, are immaculate. With great bite and thickness, these are maybe the best thick-cut tsukemen noodles outside of only a couple of those shops mentioned above. The only downside here is you need to order a larger portion, as the standard 200g is less than your average tsukemen noodle pile. This was one of the rare times I wanted more noodles to sop up the thick broth.

Miyamoto also serves up a couple of regular ramen, with a light option for those looking for a less intense bowl. The chukasoba is also niboshi-heavy, though without any pork bone broth to cut the fish, the broth is a little too sour.

Gokujo (ultra quality) niboshi soba (780yen)

Great thin noodles are a nice match for the lighter soup, but you should really get the tsukemen.

One thing that must be mentioned is that the chefs and staff really know how to turn over a counter. There were maybe 10 people ahead of us, but we waited only about 20 minutes to get seated and served. Despite that, we didn't feel rushed and the staff greeted us on the way in and out.

Very good bowls enhanced by a professional operation makes it easy to see why Miyamoto made so many best-of lists in 2015, despite being out in Kamata (also the hometown of Ishii Isami, mangaka of 750 Rider!).

Tokyo, Ota-ku, Nishi-Kamata 7-8-1
Closest stn: Kamata

Open from 11am-230pm and 6-9pm (closed Wednesdays)

Hearts