Yaro there! Sometimes you need to embrace the unexpected and glory in the thrill of the idiotic!
Especially when you walk 35 minutes to a shop that’s CLOSED ON TUESDAYS.
So you end up eating Jiro-style ramen, although I wonder if Mr. Yaro
gets mad when people say that. Then again, he’s rocking the yellow
theme, so maybe he’s an officially licensed Jiro spinoff, and he has 21
shops, so he’s probably not too fussed regardless of what you think.The
original shop is in Kanda, so I don’t know how I could have avoided it,
except that I DON”T EAT JIRO RAMEN, but the ‘main original shop’ is in
Shibuya, so maybe the Kanda one isn’t so noticeable.
The only thing that makes him mad is when you just walk by his shops, looking downtrodden.
Or sit at the counter, looking similarly.
This place was pretty mellow and sad, in a way that the garish color scheme and loud, pounding cheerful music did nothing to de-emphasize.
Also, I believe they adhere to the ‘dirtier the better’ mantra of all Jiros.
I was kinda downtrodden to see that they have an individualized mantra of “the more prepackaged the noodles, the better”, but that’s only because I’ve been going to nothing but killer shops this week. When you eat normal, you should expect normal. Easy is as easy does it. Don’t let the sound of your own bowls drive you crazy.
We may lose, and we may win.
But we will damn sure never be here again.
Not to say there was anything wrong with this. I like a good jiro once in a while. The pork is so thick it’s like eating three porkchops. With a lot of fat.
Soft, delicious porkchops. Awfully good porkchops.
Under them is the other focal point, the mountain of bean sprouts. Moyashiyama, they call it.
This moyashiyama conceals a secret. This is a weird bowl of
ramen. It doesn’t actually include noodles! You think there should be
noodles under the bean sprouts, but there are more bean sprouts for the
noodles to rest on. And then more bean sprouts, and so forth. It’s bean sprouts all the way down.
Now that I got that joke out of the way, let me point out that they give
you a choice between wok-frying or the more normal boiling for your
cabbage and sprouts, and I’m here to tell ya the wok frying adds a nice
little char to the flavor, whereas on the few times I’ve had stuff like
this before I always thought the boiled veg was a total throwaway.
The noodles are fine, but with the heavy soup and the mountain of meat and veg, you’re so tired that you can’t think about the noodles, and you just eat them mechanically.
I was a happy robot and all, but that’s enough of this style of ramen for another 5 years.