Ifu/Akihabara威風/秋葉原

 

Technically Ifu is in KandaSakumamachi, but I am associating it with Akihabara since that what most people will look it up under. Ifu is an informal shop about 30 seconds walk away from the south exit of Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara. You walk south-southwest out of the Yodobashi Camera building, past all of the teenagers trading DVDs and around the corner (it's on a diagonal corner lot). It has a long curving counter that goes all the way around the interior of the shop. I ordered the shoyu tsukemen with extra chashu (1000yen). The tsukemen broth was very interesting in that it was very thin and clear (あっさり) and slightly sweeter, but a different kind of sweetness. In the broth were long negi pieces (about 2 inches long and .75 inch in diameter) and chunks of chicken. First time I have seen chicken chunks in tsukemen broth. The noodles were long and very thin and heavy kansui-yellow. A free bowl of rice was offered to me but I didn't accept it as I was getting full already. Many people will put the rice in the remaining tsukemen (or ramen) broth after the noodles have been eaten. Decent if you are at Yodobashi Camera already but the ramen places on the 8th floor are too crowded.

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Kookai/Yurakucho空海/有楽町

Kookai is another consistently excellent chain that I talk about on the Ramen Shop Chains page. Found myself near Yurakucho this week, decided to stop in to a branch that I had not been to before. Here the Kookai is in the basement of the Hibya Chanter building (日比谷シャンテ B2F), right near one of the Hibiya station entrances to the Tokyo Metro. The standard dish that I have is the tsukemen with the fish-based broth (魚介), it's extremely rich and doesn't really taste fishy at all. The noodles are like fettucine almost, but they are good. Also had the grilled chashu with spicy onions, this was a big portion actually so make sure you are hungry or have someone to share with if you get that.

There are several Kookai shops around town, including south of Shibuya station on Meiji Dori, and in Shirokane near the northern tip of the Institute for Nature Study park.

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GSTA-MEN/Kanda Surugadaiグスタメン/神田駿河台

If you are fan of the rich and spicy "dan dan men" (坦々麺) then this is one ramen shop you can't miss in Tokyo. If you don't know what dan dan men is then please refer to the Ramen Glossary on the left. This shop is done out in this interesting LA gangster rapper motif, all the way from the murals on the inside walls of the shop to the bullet-shaped GSTA-MEN logo outside above the front door. There were only a couple of other people in there when I went, I imagine this type of ramen goes down much better in winter than in summer - I can't believe I went to this place in the middle of August. The dan dan men was quite hot/spicy, it was hard to finish the whole bowl. It has a tonkatsu-looking really really deep fried giant thing in the middle of it that I'm pretty sure was pork. One nice touch was that afterwards the ojisan (a young guy) offered me a glass of a syrupy lemon drink, sort of like an intermezzo, and it really helped get the hot taste out of my mouth. With one exception, dan dan men is the only type of ramen that they have on the menu, so make sure that's what you like. It's in the middle of an area that has lots of skiing and snowboard shops. Overall this is different enough and well-done enough to earn a Recommended, just make sure you can handle something like this before you go.

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Toushoumen/Akihabara刀削麺荘/秋葉原

This place is interesting. There's someone cutting the noodles by hand from a big block of dough into a pot of steaming water. I watched him do it for 20 minutes straight, with barely a break. These noodles end up in the dan dan men (坦々麺), which was good and had a very spicy chili taste but didn't have the same creamy rich texture as some other dan dan men dishes I've had, which are heavy on the sesame and ground meat. The noodles are not really ramen but are closer to soba in taste and consistency. Overall if you like seeing this kind of thing then you might want to go. The broth was hot, more of a "raw heat" hot I thought. The broth-filled pork dumplings are reputed to be good too but I didn't try those. Yodobashi Akiba is a good place to hit either Daixin or Kohmen so if you are there anyway then head up to the 8th floor.

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