This post was written in 2008. Shop details and prices may have changed since then.
Lately I’ve been totally hooked on niboshi ramen, the kind made with dried sardines. I heard there was a niboshi ramen specialist not too far from Shinjuku, so I went to check it out.
Niboshi ramen, the rich version
Hmm… I ordered wrong. Turns out most ramen shops that ask you to choose between light and rich don’t actually make two different soups — they just float fat on top of the light soup to make it rich. -_-;; There’s really no reason to eat a niboshi ramen with fat bobbing around on it… Ugh. If that’s all it is, why even put a rich ramen on the menu…
The noodles
Pretty ordinary noodles. Leaving the floating fat aside, the ramen here is above average. I didn’t taste much of the niboshi, but it’s a clean, high-quality shoyu ramen. That said, there’s no need to walk all that way from Shinjuku for ramen of this level. The area isn’t a shopping street, it’s hard to get to, and on top of that the flavor doesn’t have much character. If you ask me, this place is going under soon. -_- So I didn’t even take a shot of the storefront and just headed home.