I heard that a new ramen shop had opened near the Skytree, which is close to Asakusa, so I dropped in. When a shop that has only just opened already has a pretty high Tabelog score, it usually means there is a good chance the score has been gamed, but it was on my way and it was time to eat anyway, so in I went.

The entrance

It does not look like a ramen shop, so it was not exactly easy to find. A little too sleek, you could say.

An Edo Kiriko water glass

These must run about 10,000 yen apiece; a lovely glass to serve water in.

Ramen

They put the ramen together live in front of you. Blending the soup, laying on three kinds of chashu, and so on and so on.. It does look great in person, though it has little to do with the taste. Not that the taste suffers for it, and as with Gyorai, this seems to be the trend these days. Ramen is not an expensive dish, and if you order a 1,000-yen bowl and get a performance this entertaining with it, I would call that a fair deal. A new dimension of competition among ramen shops, you might say.

Hotate tori soba

The soup is basically a chicken-bone broth, but with scallop blended in it picks up a faint sweetness, and it works. The noodles were on the firm side; I found myself wondering how they would have been with a little more boiling. The three kinds of chashu, roast beef, low-temperature-cooked chashu and smoked beef, were tasty too. That said, the whole thing felt as if it had been produced by combining elements likely to be popular. A bit more personality would have been nice. In any case, there is no denying it is a ramen shop of a decent level. Something like 3.5 points feels about right.

한국어로 읽기日本語で読む