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2009-05-04

Ramen Hibiki/Shimotakaido
らーめん 響/下高井戸

    

Hibiki means "echo" or "reverbation", however what is interesting is that if you look at the kanji for hibiki, one of the components of the character is the "rou" or "郎" in Ramen Jiro:



(For you kanji-expert types the base radical is actually the "oto" 音 one at the bottom). Go figure. Anyhow, this place was a clean, well-lit, attentively-staffed place that seems to want to be a Ramen Jiro competitor, based on the pictures too, but unfortunately IMO does not come quite close enough with the taste. Only 3 people in there at about 12:30 PM on a Golden Week holiday day. It opened in March of this year and does not have any ranking on Supleks yet to speak of. It's about a 7 minute walk from Keio Shimotakaido station. The menu above points out some slightly unusual things, including "lettuce ramen". I actually had the standard shoyu chashumen for 900 yen. They will ask you what size yasais you want, the normal size would be "futsu" but they had two larger than that and one smaller. They will also ask if you want garlic - the standard amount was kind of skimpy, I would ask for more of it, by saying "ninniku oome (ooh-may) ni". The overall portion was decently-sized with standar moyashis and cabbage. The team was some sort of special "kozan cha" tea from Taiwan, again picture of the explanation above. What I would say the value of Hibiki is, is that if you wanted to sample the standard Ramen Jiro taste, or something close to it, but you were worried about all of the fat in the bowl, then this place might be an option since it has some of the standard Jiro taste, not all of it, but almost no fat in the bowl, seemed like it was shoyu and a lot of garlic and oil. The pork was decent, but was the rolled type, but on the positive size it was thickly cut, about 1/2 inch. This also is different from real Ramen Jiro branches where the pork is usually cut directly from the tenderloin, not processed at all by hand before that.

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