I had a chance to preview the new Ivan Ramen today. Ivan Plus. The adventure turned out to be the train there. The Odakyu line from Shinuku station comes in 5 or 6 flavors, ranging from a slow local train to the infamous Hakone Romance Car. Most, but not all of the trains stop at Kyodo. Learn from my mistake, and don't take the orange super commuter express line. Take the red express.
After visiting the rice fields of far west Tokyo, I hopped a train in the reverse direction, and made it to the new shop. The design is great, very comfortable, with lots of speakers playing loud music. Ivan even put a speaker in the noodle room, so whoever has the task of cranking out the day's noodles can avoid insanity.
The menu is totally different from the other Ivan shop. The ramen uses more fish in the recipe, as opposed to the chicken heavy soup at his other shop.
The onsen tamago rice bowl went great with this special soy sauce.
Recently, Ivan was on television for some sort of "reduce the salt" challenge. Part of the show involved a tour of a shoyu factory out in Chiba. This is the XO of soy sauce. It's great.
The current menu is only ramen, tsukemen, and mazemen. Each is a completely different thing. I went with the cheese mazemen.
Simple, delicious, and deadly to anyone with a lactose intolerance.
With no soup, it's a much more Italian tasting bowl. In the future, I'd order it with an egg topping for a sort of ramen X carbonara thing.
The noodles are different here as well. Wide and flat. They might be getting wider in the future. It's still a week before the official opening, anything could happen.
Speaking of the opening. I'll be there, on the 23rd, at 11am with some friends if anyone wants to come along. It might be extremely crowded, since it's a holiday and Ivan is pretty famous in Tokyo. The cheese mazemen was an impulse order. I've got to try the regular ramen.
See you next week! 11am outside the Kyodo station gates.
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