This post was written in 2006. Shop details and prices may have changed since then.
Hmm… I haven’t been carrying my camera around lately, so I don’t have any photos I took myself. -_-;;
For the details, have a look at their homepage below.
http://www.ichiran.co.jp/index.html
I’d heard a while back that a Hakata ramen shop called Ichiran was popular in Ikebukuro,
and like every popular ramen shop, they seem to be slowly opening more branches.
Yesterday, while I was sightseeing around Chiba Station, I happened to walk past this place,
and there was a sign up bragging that they’d been picked as the No. 1 ramen shop around Chiba Station,
so I went in to give it a try.
Before I rate Ichiran’s flavor, a quick word on Hakata ramen:
it’s a tonkotsu broth base with thin noodles, a bit like Korean janchi guksu.
But just because the noodles are thin doesn’t mean they lack bite.
The menu here is really simple: the basic ramen plus a few toppings, or an extra serving of noodles.
Unlike other ramen shops, they don’t sell shoyu, miso and so on all under one roof. Well, pretty much every
ramen shop that’s doing well sticks to a single broth like that… Why bother
doing several and risk a rumor that the flavor’s slipping? That’d be a bigger problem. The toppings are simple too.
There’s not even an ajitama. Chashu, negi (green onion) and an onsen soft-boiled egg, and that’s it.
And the onsen egg didn’t go with the broth at all -_-;; If you’re going to order something, getting the negi
is a much better call… The standard chashu was just okay, and I doubt ordering extra chashu
would impress me much either.
Another quirky thing is the study-carrel setup -_-;; Each person gets their own partitioned booth.
Apparently it’s so you can focus on nothing but eating… -_-;; If you come with one or more friends… well, tough luck.
It was the same when I went to Kyushu Jangara Ramen before… It’s probably great for enjoying
the pure taste of the ramen, but… it just doesn’t feel much like a ramen shop, you know? You can’t see any of the kitchen staff either…
Well, maybe that’s the secret to their popularity…
When you go in, you first have to fill out the specs for the ramen you’re going to eat.
It’s all in Japanese, so foreigners are pretty much out of luck… -_-
You get lots of choices: how firm the noodles are, how much green onion,
how much of the secret sauce (the secret sauce just tasted like gochujang to me),
how much garlic and so on. I went with firm noodles and a slightly spicy broth.
How was it? Not bad. Then again, it wasn’t the best ramen ever either…
Done wrong, it could have been just another ordinary ramen shop, but the fact that you can have
a custom-made bowl in exactly the style you like is enough on its own to earn it
a high score. That kind of business only works in Japan, with its highly developed ramen culture ^_^;
To sum this place up in a word: it deserves its popularity.
Go two or three times and you can find your own best combination, and you can change it
depending on your mood that day… I can see why it’s a success in Japan.