There’s no point just standing there and looking at it, folks. You have to go in if you want to get fed.
RR, or R^2 to his friends, likes to bill as Kichijoji’s Best Ramen – #1 on Ramendb, Tabelog, Ramen Walker, and a few other resources that they list on their sign down the street. I picked it out from one of those when we started thinking of going to Kich for a walk and a shop. The web site looks really nice, so I was hoping for sorta female-friendly ramen dining, but in practice it was pretty normal.
Except that they obviously have a bar at night, and they were going pretty hard at the music. The soft ice cream machine was out of order on the day.
The pork-mayo-rice machine was working fine. This sounded good on paper (on the button on the machine, actually) – ‘side bowl of the day’ for Y100. The prices of the ramen were low, so I thought the extra volume wouldn’t be a problem.
I regret that thought. This was very tasty; their pork-roasting skills are top-notch, and this is the closest I’ve found to good barbeque in Japan, but I regret that thought.
See why? Their special Saturday ramen turned out to be…Jiro-style. It was really good and all, especially the additional lashing of that roast pork on the right of the bowl, but oog.
This is the way to go, if you go. The regular ramen is really good, with a super-heavy fish-and-chicken-bone soup concealing normal noodles and good-quality trimmings. Years ago, I thought Tenka Ippin was gross (that’s chicken bone-based as well, and while it’s surprising, chicken bones yield a much thicker soup than pork bones), but now I’m thinking I might need to go to the original store in Kyoto on the next visit.
Luck luck! Cluck.
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