Ramen Symphony/Kawasaki/大島ラーメン

    

The Kawasaki Ramen Symphony is another one of these crazy Japanese ramen parks located in a shopping mall. Actually it's not that crazy, it's just 5 ramen shops all together. Smaller than some other ramen parks. In any case it is located in the Kawasaki Be building attached to JR Kawasaki station. You can also get there via the Keikyu line if you walk through the Azalea underground shopping district. The floor that the Ramen Symphony is on is undergoing some serious repair work and most of the floor is closed off, but the 5 shops that make up the ramen smphony are still going strong. In fact they just did a "renewal open" on Sept 6, which is something you see occasionally when a Japanese store wants to convince shoppers that something is new. The 5 different shops are in the pictures aboue, since I had been to Nantsu Tei already and at least one of the others, I decided to go with Mejiro (めじろ). A slightly watery but salty Tokyo-style shoyu, fairly thin noodles (like Hakata tonkotsu) and very large menma. An interesting touch here is a large amount of fried onions in the bowl. The grilled pork was good, the kind that falls apart in the bowl due to all of the fat melting. My only concern about this store is the price and the size - the price with extra chashu was almost 1200 yen, and the portion was not that big. These ramen parks tend to serve smaller portions on the theory that you might try more than one. If you haven't already been to Nantsu Tei, that would be my recommendation instead, if you are a first-time visitor to Ramen Symphony in Kawasaki.

Ramen Symphony home page
Mejiro page
Diddlefinger Map (English labels)
Google Map