(From the Waseda exit, go right, and right again on the large road. It's just past the building covered in crazy chains, which incidentally is a school for the blind)
After a lengthy detour down some back alleys of Takadanobaba, there was Yasube. And there was the line of 18 people. If you are a ramen nut, and have the time, this usually isn't a problem. Someone once calculated that it was 4 or 5 minutes per person in line. But this is a tsukemen shop, and things are different.
As you can see from the sign above, all the sizes are 720 yen. This is one of the selling points of tsukemen. Most shops offer any size you want for the same price. So it's essentially an all-you-can-eat noodle buffet! Just don't order the big one and only eat half. I've never seen someone order a 440 grams of wet noodles and then leave it. I can only imagine the shame.
A line of 18 people, and I sat down after only about 15 minutes. How is that possible? Well, tsukemen arrives cold, and cold goes down much faster than piping hot, oil covered ramen.
Today I ordered the spicy tsukemen.
It wasn't too spicy, but you can feel free to load a pile of diced onions into the soup, like most people were doing.
I'm not down with onions in my ramen.
Yasube was pretty standard. I'm not, nor will I ever be, a tsukemen guy. One reason is that I always tend to get soup splattered on my shirt.
But Yasube actually had bibs. Rock on, you may make a convert out of me yet.
I gotta say, though, if you are hungry, nay famished, these big thick noodles are the way to go.
But, like I said, all these tsukemen shops taste the same to me.
Shop Info Here
