Yojinbo/Jinbocho用心棒/神田神保町

 

Yojinbo loosely means "bodyguard" (the "jinbo" is a different set of kanji from the ones in Jinbocho though) and was the name of a famous Akira Kurosawa film. This shop opened approximately 8 weeks ago, in early March 2009. Many Jiro and Jiro-like places like to sport pig-themed or garlic themed-items as part of their decor and this place is no exception - they have a bag of garlic cloves hanging from the wall immediately outside the door, you can see it in some of the pictures here. While most reviews seem to be positive, my experience was average. First, there was a fairly long wait once I sat down, usually these places have the bowl in front of you pretty quickly. Second, the pork that came with my ramen was very dry and had a lot of chewy inedible portions. And they don't seem to know how to or want to deal with foreigners who speak (some) Japanese since even though I greeted them in Japanese and ordered in Japanese they still held up the garlic pot and motioned to it, instead of asking me "にんにく入れますか?". This taste was a standard Jiro taste, nothing spectacular. This place is closed Sundays, like the Kanda Jinbocho Ramen Jro across the street. I wonder why one place like this would open up directly across from one of the top-ranked Ramen Jiros in this city (the Kanda one is approximately 4.1 on Livedoor Gourmet, ranked 6th out of 32 listed), and if they were going to anyway, why they wouldn't be closed on a different day. Also interestingly enough, this place used to be a tsukemen place called Chonan that was also decently ranked on Supleks. Not sure why they closed. Toppings are standard, including a "zenbu mashi" selection that lets you specify that you want everything upgraded to large size. Pictures of the ticket machine at the links below.

Saito blog page
Supleks page
Diddlefinger Map (English labels)
Google Map