This post was written in 2005. Shop details and prices may have changed since then.
I went to the ramen shop that’s supposed to be the tastiest in Chiba.
I’d had a bad experience here before and had sworn never to go back,
but when I stopped by Chiba Station around 9 p.m. looking for something to eat, there was nowhere
else decent apart from this place..
Here’s the sign. If you look closely, you can see the hours run from 11 a.m. to 3 a.m.
Not long after I came to Japan, I suddenly got a craving for ramen one night and went to this shop (a different branch, though)
at 2 in the morning. I was so curious about Chiba’s number-one flavor that I couldn’t wait until the next day..
When I got there I ordered the negi miso ramen, supposedly the best thing on the menu, but what came out
was ramen with soup so salty it was basically inedible, so I just fished out a few noodles and left. Since they’re open until 2 a.m.,
maybe the soup had boiled down, but in that case shouldn’t they just not be open? You’ve got to serve ramen that’s at least
reasonably edible; serving ramen nobody can eat and taking people’s money for it is a rip-off..
Anyway, I ended up going back to this place for the first time in almost a year.
This is the shop’s popular shoyu ramen. It’s only 600 yen. ^_^; I was very happy with the taste. The soup uses plenty of
top-grade pork back fat and comes with thick noodles, and the two go together really well. The noodles themselves are just so-so, but the soup is so good that
I don’t think the ramen would come alive with anything but thick noodles.
A slightly closer shot. The chashu is decent enough, but the green onion and garlic blend beautifully with the soup.
Even so, it’s not good enough to be worth making a special trip from Tokyo to Chiba just for this ramen…
The ramen here is fine all round, but I do have a few complaints. The noodles were cooked about 30 seconds too long, and the soup felt about 7 degrees
cooler than it should be. What I mean is, with just a bit more care they could bring out 100% of this ramen’s potential,
but they seem content with around 85%. Then again, it’s probably too much to expect more than that from a ramen shop.. Of all the ramen shops I’ve been to so far,
Taishoken in Ikebukuro is the only one that puts real care into every single bowl. Even if it’s only open from 11 to 3 and has about as many tables
as it has staff..