I heard that a shrimp ramen specialist that is hugely popular in Hokkaido had opened in Ikebukuro, so I went to check it out. I am on a diet these days and trying to stay away from high-carb food like ramen, but the thought of this place’s clean shrimp broth was just too tempting.
The front entrance
It is in the restaurant floor of the Tobu department store, which connects directly to the station. It only opened recently, so it does not seem to be all that well known yet. There were only a few people in line ahead of me. Once it really catches on, the queue will surely get long.
The menu
The most standard order is the soup as it comes, “Sonomama”, with the Ebi Shio flavour.
The table
Maybe because it is inside a department store, the interior was really neat and clean. There were a lot of women around me too.
The kitchen and shrimp heads
They say they use a huge amount of shrimp for the broth. It was a taste you could only get by going to Hokkaido, which makes it all the more special.
The ramen
The red topping is shrimp powder, they say. It comes topped with chashu, an ajitama egg and negi.
The noodles
The standard noodles are thick, but if you ask for thin noodles they will do it. Starting with the soup, it is clean and refreshing thanks to all that shrimp, but they put in far too much pork back fat. Pork back fat makes the broth taste sweet because of the oil, but since the fat melts at a high temperature, you cannot take your time sipping the soup. – If you drink it slowly, you scald the roof of your mouth, and then the fat cools down and turns greasy – On top of that, the thick noodles got in the way of enjoying the delicate flavour of the soup. This is exactly the style of ramen young people love these days, and its strength is that you can wolf it down quickly and fill up. But for someone like me, who wants to savour every spoonful of soup and every mouthful of noodles, it is not really a good fit. Proof that I am not young anymore, I suppose. Anyway, the shrimp broth itself tasted really good, so if I ever get the chance to visit again, I will ask for no fat and thin noodles.