Keisuke RokuDaiMe/Yushimaけいすけ 六代目/湯島

   

Down Kasuga Dori going east from the famous Daiki and (the former Poppoya), is Keisuke Takeda's latest shop Keisuke RokuDaime. This shop opened on Oct 1 and your intrepid ramen reporters are of course there just a few days later to check it out. Line of about 10 people on a Saturday morning. Like most Keisuke shops, this place (his 6th) specializes in one specific style or dish of ramen. In this shop's case, it's thick linguine-style tsukemen noodles covered with a healthy portion of pork shavings and onions stewed together with a light brown sauce. Very hearty and satisfying, like his previous shop Niku Soba Keisuke in Sumiyoshi. Accompanying it is a seriously salty dipping sauce, extremely different from regular tsukemen broths, this is almost like a thick inky black soy sauce. Keisuke Takeda was there overseeing operations during the first few days and he actually served me himself, however I decided to be polite and not ask for a picture since he was clearly busy.

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Aun/Yushima阿吽/湯島

  

Sichuan noodle place - excellent dan-dan men and a special "tsuyu-nashi" dan-dan men. If you are into dan-dan men then I would say this place is a must for you. They serve a special dan-dan men with just a very light spicy sauce (no full broth), and a lot of ground beef, greens and excellent spices (the second one down on the left on the menu picture above, it will be on the ticket machine as you walk in the door also). You can order the spiciness as level 3, 4 or 5 (you will see the levels on the machine too). I really liked the tsuyu-nashi dan dan men, that's what most of the other people in the store were having. Very creamy taste, the spices were perfect for me, the ground meat was good too - although I am not an expert on that part of the world I believe that this is how dan-dan men is frequently served in China. Once everything was mixed up in the bowl it was really quite excellent. Also what's good about this place is that their other offerings, such as the chashu-men, look good too.

Also because I couldn't resist, and I have no other category for this kind of stuff, here's a picture of a cranky-looking dog with a really bad combover.

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Poppoya/Yushimaぽっぽや/湯島

  

This is the second Poppoya that I have been to - the first one being in Nihonbashi. The portion at this branch was much bigger than the other Poppoya. This branch also has a special abura soba that looked similar to Ikaruga's.... but only a fixed number of them per day. This is probably the smallest ramen shop I have been in a in a while - only 8 seats in an awkward 4x4 configuration. It's right across from Daiki, and you can see the length of the Daiki line in the above picture. There were about 5 people outside, including older and younger couples. If you get the tsukemen you will be asked warm or cold noodles. They have that free Ramen Bank magazine there now, the one that is like the Torasan one but free. This place is closed on Sundays but open on holidays (but check first). The things that distinguish Poppoya from Jiro, even though the pictures look similar, are the garlickyness and onionyness of the broth and the more rounded shape and significantly harder firmness of the noodles. As I said they were much more generous on the portion and the extra chashu. Very quick service. The branch in Nihonbashi is ranked the best as of this writing, but this one is a close second. Always good as a backup if the line at Daiki is too long , which it always seems to be. I always walk out of any Poppoya with the same satisfied feeling (at least taste-wise).

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Toumenbou/Yushima東麺房/湯島

   

Toumenbou is around the corner (almost) from Daiki. It has a small U-shaped counter, no tables, only 9-10 people max, and there was only one other person in there when I came in. Being right around the corner from Daiki, maybe that explains why - probably their only customers on any given day will be locals, anyone else who comes to the area will opt for Daiki instead, justified or not and may have come here for that reason anyway. Toumenbo sports a weaker shoyu broth than most places. An interesting unique point was that there was lots of free kimchi on the table (they sell it to take home also), that was nice, and it was of good quality. The noodles were nothing special, supermarket type, pork was decent, broth had a lot of floating onions in it and was slightly sweet for shoyu. I did receive a coupon for free gyoza on my next visit. For a limited time they have a special chicken wonton men (picture above), but that is probably gone now.

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Daiki/Yushima大喜/湯島

  

Like Menya Kissou, Daiki is also another one of these ramen shops that has a very high rating on many sites and has been on the cover of various ramen and cuisine magazines, but IMO is not as spectacular as people make it out to be. The line was about 20-25 people long on a slightly drizzly rainy Saturday afternoon in Yushima. The ticket machine is well-labeled and easy to understand. For the summer they had a hiyashi tsukesoba (15 per day) but today I had the regular tsukemen. I sat down after 30 minutes of standing there and trying to read the newspaper of the person in front of me. The broth was shoyu with some slight sweetness and a lot of onions. The noodles were of good quality and greased up with a little oil, like Harukiya. The extra chashu is hard to make out in the picture and was fatty but decent. Overall it was good but I think overrated. The dish that is more famous is the shio ramen so if you are in the neighborhood and you want to give the place a whirl any way go for that.

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Taifu/Myogadani台風/茗荷谷

 

Taifu is about 10 minutes walk down the slope (going northeast) from Korakuen Station on the Marunouchi line. Korakuen Station is two stops from Ikebukero going east. Very neat and clean shop, very brightly lit interior, 11-12 seats, no tables. Got there just after the Saturday open at 11 AM. I was the second person in the place, however a lot of people started arriving just a few minutes later, probably all locals. The place was full by 11:20. There are a few chairs outside so maybe they get busy enough at times to cause a line. The wait staff was very friendly and helpful. The mase (ma-zay) tsukemen (まぜ つけ麺) was the special at 400g - there are only 20 of these dishes for lunch and dinner each, each day. Although I would imagine that you can ask for a smaller portion if you want, it was a lot of food. This dish contains noodles of two different widths, both fettucine width and thin spaghetti widths. These noodles also were more soba-like in color, a shade darker than regular ramen noodles, and they had a lot of springyness and bite to them. They were served cold and quite wet, however I wasn’t asked whether I wanted them served hot or cold. The slight problem with that was that they were cold enough that they cooled down the broth after only a short while. Normally you would ask for some hot water from the noodle pot to be added to the broth but I was in a rush this time. The broth was like Tetsu’s broth but thinner and a bit less rich, heavier on the fish side I think than on the pork side. It contained small flakes of red pepper in it (just barely enough to taste), a few onions, and cut up pork. The extra pork I ordered was grilled on the outside and then sliced, very good looking cut.

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Tetsu/NishiNipporiつけめん TETSU/西日暮里

   

Tetsu is located about 10 minutes walk southwest from Nishi Nippori station on the JR Yamanote line. At 2 PM on a Saturday there was a line of about 10 people in front, however I have seen it much longer, 30-40 people. The place has 10 seats inside. The ticket machine is actually outside the store, it's that small. I ordered the tsukemen atsumori or "つけあつ". This is a total of 400g of noodles that is delivered in two separate bowls (separate from the dipping broth). The first bowl (200g) is warm noodles in a thin broth made with katsuobushi. The second bowl (200g) contains the same amount of noodles but served cold in no broth, normal tsukemen style. The omori ticket on the machine will bump this total up to 500g (> 1 lb) of noodles. The thick shiru pork and fish dipping sauce was generously portioned - it had a very rich taste and a thick kotteri texture slightly reminiscent of Tenkaippin. This broth was drinkable directly from the bowl, it was that good. The chashu topping that I ordered (250 yen) was cut up and put in the bowl for me. It tasted good but it was then harder to evaluate its fattiness/level of grilling, etc. The noodles were correctly done, slightly katame. But this place also has two small touches that set it apart from other tsukemen shops. One of them is that the hot noodle water ("yu") that you are sometimes offered to heat up your leftover shiru was already on the counter in thermos pitchers, that was convenient, most places bring it to you when they think you need it, in a little cup or pitcher. A more interesting innovation is the yaki-ishii (焼き石) that you will be offered near the end of your meal, pictured in the photograph above. This is a heated rock (actually on closer inspection it might be metal, "tetsu" = iron, although I didn't see the correct kanji 鉄 anywhere, but I'm not sure) that is served to you on a little dish, you then put it in your remaining shiru to keep it hot, it fizzes and bubbles, while you are finishing off your noodles. Definitely recommended.

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