航海屋 Kokaiya: white on rice

A little walk from Shinjuku Station is this classic shop with many prominently displayed billboards. Usually shops that flaunt their services so openly are suspicious. Good shops let their bowls (and lines of people) do the talking.

Despite the chest-thumping, Kokaiya is a solid bowl. It's a light shoyu broth, comprised mostly of chicken bones and lots of different types of fish with shiny silver skin. But none of that skin ever makes its way into the bowl, so all you taste is the heavy fishiness. Several pieces of very good chashu pork top the regular ramen bowl. 

Ramen with lunch chashu rice (600yen)

Lunch also comes with a free bowl of chashu rice, made from leftover bits of chashu. It's actually pretty tame on the meat flavor, but is a nice bonus considering the regular bowl of ramen is damn inexpensive. For an extra 100 yen, you can get up to three refills.

You can do far worse than Kokaiya in the Shinjuku Sanchome area. You can also do better, but shops like Kokaiya last a few decades for a reason. They deliver satisfying goods, consistently and quickly prepared, at a very reasonable price, and have just enough personal touch to not make you feel like you're dining in a Hidakaya chain.

Tokyo, Shinjuku-ku, Shinjuku 3-12-4
Closest stn: Shinjuku Sanchome (3 min walk)

Open 11am-1am Monday-Wednesday, 11am-2am Thursday-Saturday, 11am-9pm Sunday

Hearts

鬼金棒 Kikanbo: the towering inferno

It's getting very humid and sticky...but sometimes don't you feel like eating a spicy bowl and getting sweaty? For those who do, this Kanda shop is the place. A delicious bowl of miso with extra spice.

The Chinese characters for Kikanbo here are 鬼金棒. 鬼 is oni, or "ogre," while 金棒 is kanbou, or "iron club," like the one in the picture below of the ogre holding a spiked club. Ogre's Iron Club - what a rugged name. 

 Yeah, of course the inside of the shop is rugged and entertaining.

The BGM is japanese taiko music and the walls are covered with a lot of ogre masks. It feels like a dark Japanese festival. And it's just as hot.

Cooking with fire...hot and spicy miso

You can order several levels of カラ, or kara ("spice") and シビ, or shibi ("numbing") from Chinese numbing peppers. Be careful with that stuff!

I ordered the 増し, or mashi ("extra") spice level with regular numbing.

Ajitama karashibi miso ramen (880yen)

How did it taste? It wasn't as spicy as I expected, though some people tell me I have an insane spice tolerance level. The bowl actually looks spicier than it is. 

In addition to the spicy soup, there was sweet baby corn, noodles of different width...

...juicy chashu pork...

...and a delicious seasoned egg.

This isn't just a spicy gimmick bowl of ramen. Each ingredient has been carefully considered to make the bowl tastier and keep the bowl's balance. I quite understand why people are so into Kikanbo's ramen.

I've never been to such an entertaining ramen shop. Even the staff were like a group of ramen-making ogres - maybe they could be a bit more cheerful!

One warning: be careful when you go to the bathroom the next morning.

Tokyo, Chiyoda-ku, Kajicho 2-10-10
Closest stn: Kanda (5 min walk)

Open from 11am-930pm Monday-Saturday (11am-4pm Sunday)

Lum

フジヤマ55 Fujiyama 55: sir mix-a-lot

Mazemen, or abura-soba, are "mix noodles." Noodles which possess no soup. That's bad. But you get your choice of topping! That's good!

Fujiyama 55 is a shop that specializes in tsukemen, dip noodles, and mazemen. The shop's name is a play on words. The number 55 in Japanese can be read "go-go," as in "Go, go to the ramen, boy." The shop is owned by a fairly large conglomerate called soupbeat that operates 55-related branches around the country. soupbeat is helmed by man who claims to have eaten over 500 bowls of ramen since becoming a ramen shop owner. 500 might sound like a lot, and it is, but there are professional ramen bloggers out there who have eaten over ten times that amount.

Fujiyama 55 shops have been springing up around the country, but most of them are still located in their  hometown Aichi prefecture. This was a shop within walking distance to Nagoya Station, though you will be sweating heavily by the time you get there. You are born sweating heavily in Nagoya.

Taiwan mazesoba (800yen)

Fujiyama does things a bit differently, even by mazesoba standards. Your noodles don't come in a pleasing porcelain bowl, but rather a soulless steel orb one would associate with mixing pancake batter. You are told to mix your noodles with the plastic chopsticks, and this produces a lot of metal clanking noises.

Fujiyama's produces a one-of-a-kind mazesoba which it calls a Taiwanmazesoba. Taiwan ramen consists of a shoyu (soy sauce) base ramen soup topped with a mix of ground beef, nira garlic chives, bean sprouts, and a whole lot of extra spices and peppers. Even big ramen fans outside of Nagoya are unaware that the dish did not come from Taiwan, but is rather the proudest thing that Nagoya has ever invented. Supposedly, many moons ago, an insane chef of a Taiwanese restaurant cooked it for his starving minions so they would stop complaining. The rest is history.

Fujiyama 55's Taiwan mazesoba consists of all of those wonderful ingredients, plus a raw egg (a staple in any mazesoba worth its salt). Mix, mix some more, and eat furiously. It's not the tastiest mazesoba, as the fat is pretty muted in favor of a little bit of ground beef and a lot of bonito. And it's not even close to the best Taiwan ramen, where the soup mixes with the spicy beef for a sear that is painful delicious. Did I mention you eat the whole thing in a bowl straight out of the kitchen?

This is why. Once you're finished with the noodles, you're left with a heaping pile of greasy beef and onions and bean sprouts. You heat this steel bowl of pork and fat on the plate warmer sitting innocently before you...

...and pour the oily goodness (with another egg!) on top of a bowl of rice. Round 2. You win.

Nagoya, Chuo-Oosuka 3-11-16

Closest stn: Nagoya (it's really not that far, about a 4 min walk)

Open from 1130am-1130pm Monday-Friday (1130am-330pm and 4pm-1030pm Saturday-Sunday)

Hearts

camino: garden state

This tsukemen shop is located in Mishuku, Setagaya ward. The shop appearance is like a small cafe. 

Hearts and I got the ajitama yasai tsukemen - cooked vegetable dip noodles with exquisite seasoned egg (translation is more or less correct).

Ajitama yasai tsukemen (1150yen)

This bowl really surprised us, because there was a lot of veggies. Zucchini, squash, greens, etc. A little pricey, but think of it like a plate lunch served at a fancy cafe. It looked like a bagna cauda! Sounds healthy, huh?

Also, the bowl consisted of just 100g of noodles, which means that half of the bowl is all veggies (and delicious egg).

Actually, I have mixed feelings every time I eat ramen. I'm satisfied, but on the other hand, I am a lady! I care about calories. 

However, I enjoyed the bowl this time without any guilt (well, almost any guilt).

The rich tonkotsu-gyokai broth went well with both noodles and various veggies. And the soup wari at the end had lots of ginger for a sweet finish.

A bowl (plate?) that's filling and which both men and women can enjoy.

Tokyo, Setagaya, Mishuku 2-11-33
Closest stn: Ikenoue or Ikejiri-ohashi (about a 10 min walk from either)

Open from 1130am-230pm and 5-10pm (closed Monday and every 3rd Tuesday)

Lum

青島食堂 Aoshima Shokudo: akihabara's neighborhood ramen

Akihabara. Known for its "B-kyu," junk-food spots, there are unsurprisingly a few notable ramen joints. Most casual visitors tend to eat at the well-known tonkotsu spot Kyushu Jangara. It's a solid, if overly oily, tonkotsu place.

But the love in Akihabara really goes to Aoshima. Long lunch waits on all days. Mostly male, though not what you would assume to be the otaku crowd. Then again, Akihabara hasn't been the hub for that demographic for a while now.

Shokudo in Japanese means "cafeteria." In Japanese, this means stools, fluorescent lights, and a casual, diner-like vibe.

Ticket options are huge. You can get half-orders of any topping.

Aoshima's go-to-bowl is their shoyu ramen. It's also their only bowl. A lot of confidence in a traditional chuka-soba exuding old-school nostalgia, but Aoshima has more refinement than your average local mom-and-pop ramen shop. The soup is infused with heavy amounts of ginger for a beautiful fragrance and taste.

Shoyu ramen with chashu (750yen)

The ginger makes for some deep shoyu flavor. Look at that soup. And the noodles have some great spring.

The best bowl in Akihabara?

Probably, though this is a great classic shoyu that would be deserving in any ramen mecca.

Tokyo, Chiyoda-ku, Kanda Sakumagahashi 3-20-1

Closest stn: Akihabara (7 min walk)

Open from 1130am-7pm (closed on Tuesdays)

Hearts