Men Deru/Denenchofu麺 でる/田園調布

 

Men Deru (麺 でる) is a classic old-style ramen place run by the standard single old oyaji guy with a headband. I wonder if this place was ever a Ramen Jiro since it serves the same type of ramen, it's old, has the same type of ticket machine, and has the same type of red counter top that most of them have. Lots of people were coming in and out, a strange show. There were a bunch of strange items affixed to the outside of the shop including a flashing traffic light and various pig-related signs and cooking pots. The restroom is actually outside the back of the store to the right. The guy has several TVs inside the shop connected to closed cirucuit cameras that look up and down the street, perhaps from a time when there were longer lines that he wanted to keep track of. The number of signs and instruction stickers in the store is incredible. As for the ramen, he mixed a large amount of black or garlic-flavored pepper into the soup. It's quite close to a Jiro-style dish - except much darker shoyu, rich shoyu with relatively little of the tonkotsu creaminess, and very heavy garlic. However the pork was average, and the noodles a bit overcooked. Here are some better pictures of the darkness of the broth. Also for trivia's sake, apparently this guy at one time had a 17-slice chashu ticket for 1400 yen. More currently, on various days of the month he has noodles that come in multiple strands connected to gether. On the 18th and 19th of the month he has black noodles, not sure what he colors/flavors them with. The default noodle amount is 400g. The self-serve water is on the left near the ticket machine when you come in. Only a moderate rating on supleks. The sign on the left of the ticket machine says something about how his grandmother came up with this simple flavor in Hiroshima during the Meiji era.

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