Kiraboshi/Musashino Cityきら星/武蔵野市

    

I really wanted to give Kiraboshi a "Recommended", but something is just missing for me here, and it doesn't justify the lines I've seen in pictures. The place is extremely cramped, the waitresses were slightly falling over each other, one of them actually dropped a rice bowl into a customer's lap while I was standing in line. The water machine takes almost 30 seconds to dispense a cup of room-temperature water with no ice. The tsukemen is standard tonkotsu gyoukai, but they put an amount of cabbage on top and then coat it a bit more with a special brown fish-based sauce, either saba (mackerel) or katsuo (bonito)-based. The line was about 10 people when I got there. Most shops of this high ranking on Supleks (68) will also have a high ranking on other sites such as Tabelog, this one does not (3.14), as of this writing. They also offer a special "yamitsuki" (addictive) "change Jiro" topping for 100 yen that presumably makes it taste more like Jiro. The spice tubes there in the picture looked like they had been sittng there for ages.

Saito Blog
Zatsu Blog with better pictures than mine
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Chin Chin Tei/Musashi Sakai珍々亭/武蔵境

  
  

Chin Chin Tei serves one of the best abura soba (油そば) dishes in Tokyo. Basically a cheap, tiny cafeteria-like room in a nondescript building about 15 mins walk from Musashi Sakai station on the JR Chuo line, it always has a large number of people lined up in front of it, according to one of the people I was on line with. The woman will open up the window on the side of the building and ask you what your order is (e.g. "shou abura soba") while you are waiting. Their abura soba, actually the "chashu" abura soba, comes with a generous portion of pork, plain but decent noodles, and an excellent oily porky broth. The large is actually almost comparable to the Jiro "dai" so be warned. You have to be careful when you mix it all around so that the parts don't go flying. Black pepper recommended. The staff is very friendly and chatted with me in (easy) Japanese while I waited for my meal. Probably don't get too many Westerners there. They also have regular chukka soba on the menu too.

Liking (as I do) to combine multiple targets in one region on one run, on the way back to the station from Chin Chin Tei I stopped at a place called Hao Hao (好好). This place's Shisen sui gyoza were also written up in the June 09 edition of Dancyu magazine. While the gyoza were quite good, with a spicy peanutty sauce, the service was not as polite as Chin Chin Tei's that day, the Chinese owner (notice the Chinese flag out front in the pictures) must have had something in for Westerners that day. As for this place, enter at your own risk.

Livedoor Page
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Haruki-ya/Kichijoji春木屋/吉祥寺

  

The original hon ten of this Haruki-ya chain of three stores is nearby in Ogikubo. The Kichijoji shop is a a cramped store with table in back and never a line of less than 5 people while I was in there - it seemed to be mostly couples and family though. They have a fairly limited menu with different variations on the classic Tokyo style shoyu broth. It's a very strong flavor broth, very salty and you can see 1/4 inch of oil on top in the picture. Interestingly enough they have noodles to take out - and fresh pork too - this is a first I have seen a place with take out noodles also having take out portk. The weirder thing is that they have no extra pork topping on the topping menu. For a limited time they have some hiyashi chukas. The noodles were quite good, fairly thin though, with sesame seeds and nori. The noodles themselves actually had some flavor, I'm thinking that some sort of oil like sesame or similar might have been put on them prior to serving.

Shop home page (more pictures)
Diddlefinger Map (English labels)
Google Map