Mega Ganja/Kawagoe Cityメガガンジャ/川越市

  

Good Ramen Jiro-inspired shop, admittedly out of the way in Kawagoe City in Saitama, but fortunately right near the station. Long shotengai to walk down near it, with stores like Zara, Starbucks and Maruhiro. Square-in-cross section extremely thick (as thick as the chopsticks) darker Jiro-style noodles. Soup is decent but average for this type of shop. Very strict shop staff, made us wait outside even in the rainy cold. Buy your ticket and then queue up outside close to the building. They also add (for 150 yen more) a special aburi (アブリ) grilled fatty pork bits on the side. Huge volume for the price if you get the extra veggies ("yasai mashi") Closed Wednesdays.

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Rahmen Academy/MusashiurawaRahmen Academy/武蔵浦和

     

The Saitama-ken Musashiurawa Rahmen Academy is open from 11 to midnight every day of the week except Sunday, when they are only open until 10 PM. Some shops may be open shorter or longer times than that. It's located right near JR Musashiurawa Station and it is another one of these ramen theme parks that you see dotted all around Tokyo, typically in shopping malls near stations. This place has 5 or 6 shops, all seemingly good, but none of them appeared to be particularly well-known or outstanding. There was one Yokohama-style place, one Hokkaido, one Hakata, one Chinese place and one of unknown lineage. I ate at the Hokkaido-style one, called Marutake, which appears to be affiliated with the Mutsumiya chain. I had the current special, the sesame miso ramen with cabbage and pork - this was a very strongly-sesame-flavored dish, with plenty of cabbage but a bit skimpy on the pork, which they browned with one of those gas torches immediately before bringing it over. The noodles appeared to be hand-made but not sure, they were thin and not curly. Good dish but the flavor was very strong. This place is actually huge, a long, long counter with a deep kitchen behind it, obviously built to handle a lot of customers. But not too many people in the place on a Sunday PM, I sure hope for their sake that they get a lot of people during the week. You can see some of the other specialty dishes from some of the other stores in the picture above. One other interesting thing on the menu at Marutake was the yaki-shorompo - haven't seen the yaki version of those before, those I did not try. However if you are in the mood for Chinese food the Chinese place Wang Rong right next door looks like a better bet actually. Good but not worth a special trip to Saitama.

Rahmen Academy - Home Page
Rahmen Academy - Pictures of How To Get There
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Ramen Jiro/Omiyaラーメン二郎/大宮

 

Much of the area around JR Omiya Station seems a bit on the seedy side. If I never came back here again it would be too soon. A fair bit of garbage, odd-looking people walking around. On both sides of the Omiya Ramen Jiro there were love hotels. This Ramen Jiro opened last August to a bit of fanfare as it was the first one that had opened in a while. Finally got a chance to go up there on Sunday as their weekend hours are a bit weird, only open starting at 5 PM on Sundays, and noon to 4 on Sunday. The waiting time at this Jiro was about 30 mins, divided into two lines both in front of the place and directly across the street. The woman will come out to remind you to come in and buy a chip, or to see what chip you've bought, or to cajole you to move from one line to another. The soup was quite different here from other Jiro branches, there was no suspended fat at all, and the broth was not clear, with a strange slightly milky taste. The noodles were very thin, thinner than most other Jiros, similar to linguine, and over cooked. The pork was average for Jiro. One item on the toppings menu that is not usually on other Jiros is togarashi, but I didn't have it. No tissues or napkins. They do have tsukemen though, which again I did not try. Not sure this is worth the trip (from the lower 23 anyway).

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Junk Garage/Osakiジャンクガレッジ/大崎

  

UPDATE - 2008-10-19 - I haven't been there recently myself but I have it on good authority that Junk Garage has moved to Saitama Prefecture.

Junk Garage is known for a very different style of ramen, more of a "bunch of stuff in a bowl" style, as you can see from the pictures. We arrived at about 6:30 PM and there was a line of about 10 people already. There are 7 seats, interesting wood paneling on the counter and and lots of porn under it. Junk Garage is only open in the evenings, starting at 6 PM. It's right next to the famous Rokurinsha (六厘舎), which closes at 4:30. You have to be very careful standing on line as the cars come down that street very tightly, the store staff comes out every few mins to take your tickets and remind people to stay behind the orange cones. The base style that the shop is known for is the mazesoba (ma-zeh, まぜそば), that's firm noodles with a bit of oil and just a small amount of soup in the bottom of the bowl, similar to shiru nashi (汁なし) style or abura soba (油そば). And it had some coarse-ground black pepper on it, just a perfect amount, and the noodles were done perfectly. There were some noodles of a thinner width in the bowl but they were mostly thick, almost as thick as the chopsticks as you can see from the picture. They have ramen too, and it is prepared in a manner very close to the Jiro style. The set of available toppings is slightly different for ramen vs. mazesoba, and you can see a picture of the toppings menu below. By default for the mazesoba you get a raw egg on top (actually the yolk only), so be sure to tell them if you don't want that. The default amount of garlic was a little small, perhaps get ninniku mashi. However you can only get yasai with the ramen, not with the mazesoba. Free tissues on top of the ticket machine round out the deal. Somewhat different and very impressive.

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