b Happy Sumo Food Journal

Saturday, July 28, 2007

KYUSHU JANGARA RAMEN - Tokyo

This is a chain of ramen shops. We went to the one in the Omotesando shopping district, near the Harajuku station. Apparently, there are multiple styles of ramen. Who knew? I grew up on the dried kind, four for a buck in the soup aisle.

I believe this one specializes in Hakata-style, pork bone broth, which produces a rich, dense, flavorful base. Not at all like the powdered stuff that comes in the supermarket ramen. My friend took me here. He's an expat from LA who has lived in Tokyo for about five years now.

If I ever had a picture in my head of a typical ramen shop in Tokyo, it would have looked exactly like this. That's something I love about traveling, you walk into a place like this and you get a snapshot of the culture in a meal.

They have an english menu. We got the 1A, kind of like getting a burger with everything. I think it was 980 yen, about $8.30 US. As you can see, it's cash only, something I found more often than not in most of the restaurants here.

They have all kinds of options, for example you can order an extra serving of noodles for a marginal cost (usually 90 or 100 yen) - less than a buck. Yep, that's what we did. As soon as they brought our bowls out, we ordered up another serving of noodles. You can also order extra broth if you run out.

There's all kinds of condiments on the counter for you to dress up your ramen. I added garlic and pickled ginger to mine. That's seasoned "spicy" cod roe submerged at 3 o'clock in the bowl. I'm not quite sure how they make it spicy, and I don't really want to know. Definitely an acquired taste...and texture.

Overall rating - 3.5 sumos

1 Comments:

At 9:19 PM, Blogger Old Fat Runner said...

I love this place!!! I never thought that Mentaiko would taste good in Ramen, but it is absolutely delicious!!

 

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