大つけ麺博 (The Big Tsukemen Festival in Hibiya)

大つけ麺博



A few weeks ago I mentioned that I had been given the chance to help out at a tsukemen festival near Hibiya park. Ivan Orkin, owner of Ivan Ramen, gave me, Nate, and Keizo this opportunity. We were happy to accept. Not just happy, ecstatic. This could be my biggest ramen adventure to date!



I worked on Saturday and Sunday, probably the 2 busiest days of the festival. Why so busy?



Sure, Ivan's line was long, but not long enough to command a 2 hour line for the ticket machines before the place even opened. Something else was going on.



Minoru Sano was here for 2 days. Sano-san is just about the biggest name in ramen. If he approves of your shop on TV, you are set for life, as is the case with 69 N' Roll One and Koshinbo, who's owners were there to show support for the event. He doesn't approve many shops. He has been likened to the famous "Soup Nazi" from Seinfeld.



Here's his line. Nope, that's the gap point.



Here's the real end. People were waiting up to 3 hours for a chance to sample the master's noodles. Since we were working hard, one of his staff brought by one for our staff to share.



Excellent noodles sprayed with a konbu seaweed "mist". The soup was very light, like weak chicken broth. A unique interpretation of the usually heavy tsukemen for sure.



But I'm getting ahead of myself. It actually started for me quietly at 9:30am.



Everything was brought in big Tupperware containers, cooked and assembled on the spot.



These tomatoes were quick to run out. 500 roasted tomatoes lasted no more than 3 hours. If you ever go to Ivan's shop, get one on your ramen.



We made a salad of spring onion and pepper grass, tossed with kosher salt, fresh cracked pepper, and a kiss of light dressing. Actually, I thought the salad alone tasted pretty bad, but when paired with the chicken it became amazing. I'm always amazed how ingredients can work like that. Too little or too much and a dish is ruined. In the last couple hours before closing, I kept "accidentally" making too much salad and eating the leftovers.



The salad was included, and customers could choose to buy extra toppings as well. For 100 yen each, we had roasted garlic, Ivan's original style eggs, and the roasted tomato. Most people got all 3.



The process was simple.

1. Cook and cool the noodles and place them on the plate
2. Put the salad on the noodles
3. Put a bowl of hot soup on the plate
4. Toppings
5. Serve

When we were on point, it worked like clockwork. Each person was on their task. I would lay out plates, maybe pre-load some with toppings, then the second the salad was place on I had it over to the guy who would put the soup on. The plates would get passed hand to hand to hand. Like a well oiled machine.



Then there were times when it didn't work so well. The system of pre-loading toppings hit a wall, I'm sitting with 8 plates in front of me, and the noodle guy is expecting fresh plates to be out in the next 2 seconds. Customers are getting served without their garlic, and its a mess.



But this was a rare case, and even when we were doing 8 bowls at a time (the norm was 3 or 4), life was good.



Ivan headed things up....



... when he wasn't taking care of business.



And the lines grew...



and grew.



So how was the tsukemen we dished up? Luckily I got a break halfway through the day to try it proper.



The soup was a white chicken cream soup with 20 ingredients. This was something I could drink straight (and did a few times).



The egg was amazing. I talked with Ivan a lot and he told me he had an option to go with a big "egg" company. Instead he had his staff peel and transport a few thousand of these. It was worth it.



After lunch, walking back to Ivan's, I thought I'd take some pictures of other workers.



In the back of Keisuke's , I snapped this shot, then the big guy yelled, "You want some?" I had two options with my reply. Option 1, "No sir, I just ate and couldn't possibly have another bowl. I know it's no charge, but I just can't. Take care!". Option 2, "Hell yeah I want a bowl of your crab and shrimp soup!"



The choice was obvious? Very similar to what you get at his regular shop.



Back at Ivan, things died down a bit in the evening, and we were at a steady pace of 3 bowls at a time. A few of my friends showed up to say hi. Thanks a ton P, Y, M, C, K, S, L, M, M, and K.





In the end, we did about 1200 each day. That's a lot of noodles. And a lot of happy people. Even though food at an outdoor festival isn't going to be as good as at a shop, the atmosphere was lively and not to be missed.



Around 10pm we finished cleaning up, and a few people went back to Ivan's shop to prepare for the next day. I got some well needed rest.



Day 2 was more of the same, minus Nate. But we kept cranking out the bowls, making mouths happy. I tried a bowl from Ramen Jun, all the way from Nagano.



The spicy miso and ishinori gave this bowl some good smoky flavor. Paired with a beer would be the way to go.



One bowl didn't get to try was at Ganja Ramen. Finally at the end of the day, amid an after work arm wrestling match....



I talked to the shop owner. It's a fairly new shop from... Kawagoe. I used to live in Kawagoe, years back. They had some interesting toppings.



Free ganja... but they ran out.



After 2 days of hard work, I couldn't have been happier. I know there is some novelty to seeing a gaijin doing it, but seeing people's faces light up when I'd yell いらっしゃいませ (welcome to our store!) was something else.

Thank you Ivan!

四代目 けいすけ (Yondaime Keisuke in Bunkyo)

四代目 けいすけ


Only a few minutes up the street from Keisuke's waaaaay awesome Shodai Keisuke is his 4th incarnation of adventurous, experimental ramen. Blackened miso, followed by shrimp, followed by this.



Ise Ebi, 伊勢海老, is Japanese spiny lobster. Yep, this soup features kilos and kilos of lobster.

But it doesn't stop at this soup. No way! Coming to this shop is a whole experience. Let's look at the steps. Keisuke (in cute character form) breaks it down.



I'll break it down too.



Yeah, you WILL wait. On a rainy Sunday night the wait was just over 40 minutes.



You'll be presented first with your noodles. This gives you a good 30 seconds to ponder what is going on here. The lunchtime crowd gets standard tsukemen, but at night its yakimorimen, 焼もりめん, fried style noodles. Just enough to get one side a little crispy. Part of the fun here is figuring out how to eat these. Most of them break away, but some clump up. Good luck.



The soup is served bubbling hot (there's a built in hot stone in the bowl). And it's totally great. The lobsters add a nice hint of flavor. You might be expecting a lobster bisque, but its really just thick pork soup with some other flavor. Good flavor.



You will have about a third of the soup left when you are done. Instead of the usual broth to add and drink, Keisuke takes a novel approach.



A fried rice ball. Mush it up into your soup.



The rice has almost no taste, letting you truly savor the flavor of the soup.

It should also be noted that you can get small, regular, or large size, all the same price. But if you get the small, you get a free topping. Every woman entering the shop, and there were plenty, was told that most girls get the small size. How dainty! My friend chose a free egg...



...and said that this was the best ramen ever eaten.

Shop info here.

TOKYO味噌らーめん A.O. (Tokyo Miso Ramen A.O. near Tokyo Station)

TOKYO味噌らーめん A.O.



It was to be a ramen adventure. Or more like an adventure in finding the ramen shop. Maybe we should have read the small print in the latest ramen magazine that Nate from Waseda-Ramen had, but we didn't. Armed with an address and a general idea, we headed out.

After a couple wrong turns, we ended up here.



Really? There's a ramen shop here?



Gourmet! That's gotta mean food.

Just around the corner was a sad little food court area. A dozen shops, appealing to the lunch time business crowd, made their home here. But maybe they get some good business. Even though this was the basement of a building with the most creative name I've come across lately, 日本ビル... Japan Building. But if you've ever been to this part of town, namely Tokyo Station and the surrounding Otemachi and Nihonbashi stations, you know it is a massive underground maze of shops and access to the 40 story business towers above. EVERYTHING is accessible.



Or maybe business isn't too good. The day after we made it was to be the last. In it's place, the decent tantanmen chain 陳麻家. Oh well, let's see what we have.



An ok bowl of miso. The soup was bland, which is a big problem when you have miso. To me, miso ramen is all about a huge first taste. Other styles should be good to the last drop, but I think miso needs to kick you in the face, screaming "Uuuuuumai!" the second the spoon gets sipped. Meh is too low a rating, but its close.



The addition of some grated parmesean cheese helped a bit. But not enough to make the 870 yen worth it.

It should be noted that the noodles were good. The A.O. here refers to an old style of making the noodles. Some enzyme of sorts. Maybe Nate will do the research, but I've got to write up something better.

Shop info here (but don't bother... it's closed now!).