In retrospect, not the brightest thing, an early lunch of ramen before Thanksgiving dinner. But it was early enough, and I didn’t even eat it all. Which is not a good sign, no. Most times when I jog, I’ll go through Kiyosumi Shirakawa one way or another. I always see this place, and the wooden sign with “Roast Pork” on it, big as life, calls my name (as does the fishy smell from the soup at that tsukemen place in Ryogoku, but I figured that was way too filling for today). No lunch plans on a Saturday…had to do something.
While instincts can be wrong, I had a bad feeling about this place when I stepped in. Just something quiet and bored about it. Ramen places, you either want to be lively from the energetic young people making the bowls, or else you want them to be quietly intense from the passion of the single ramen-crazed guy devoting his life to his craft. This felt workmanlike. I mostly watched the making-of promotional for the new Battleship Yamato movie. Kuroki Meisa used to be on the cover of Tokyo Calendar sometimes, and is still A-OK.
The soup and noodles were a lot like those at Hope Ramen, up the road a piece, and I didn’t eat all of those either. Decent old-fashioned soup, and I see where another blogger said the noodles were from Asakusa’s Kaikarou, but they were boiled into oblivion. The egg was hard-boiled. The roast pork of the name was pretty good – basically strips of very soft belly that had been grilled to a slight crust. You can’t go wrong with that, but there’s no reason to go back here. I’ll hit that tsukemen place soon for you; it looks more promising.
And I’m a Promise Keeper, u-huh.