A note on the words: shio ramen is the salt-based style, here built on a sea-bream (tai) broth. Mazesoba is ramen with no soup — a sauce sits under the noodles and you mix it all together yourself. Ochazuke is broth poured over rice at the end of a meal.
Taishio Soba Toka, Tobu Ikebukuro on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Drinkers, thank you for waiting. It is Hangover Meshi time.
Scouting for lunch on the twelfth floor of Tobu Department Store, in the restaurant floor called SPICE. There is a good range of shops, but at weekends it gets very busy. Most open at 11:00, and there are already queues before that, or the sign-up sheet is packed — that sort of popular restaurant floor. I have been eating a lot of ramen lately, and I am going to eat ramen again.
This time, Taishio Soba Toka.
I am fairly sure there used to be one in Akasaka — though on reflection that was the tsukemen version.
It may be a ramen shop, but it is a department-store restaurant through and through: as well as ramen there is a good range of sets with rice dishes. Looking over the menu, there is a mazesoba exclusive to Taishio Soba Toka, Tobu Ikebukuro. Well, I want that.
Sat down, and first of all…
A highball this time. Very good.
Here it is. So this is the mazesoba. That is a lot of noodles.
Plenty of chopped spring onion, a heap of katsuobushi shavings, shredded nori, and diced chashu laid out with a good sense of colour. In the centre, a soft-boiled onsen egg with chilli threads on top. Even before mixing, the fragrance of the dashi lifts. First you mix it thoroughly, though perhaps because there are so many noodles, even mixing is hard work. Finally mixed, and a mouthful.
The sauce lurking under the noodles works on the savour of a katsuobushi-based Japanese dashi — refined somehow, and distinctly Japanese for a mazesoba. Though the salt is fairly strong. The dashi savour comes through firmly, but the salt does feel like too much. The noodles have a smooth finish. The broken onsen egg tangles nicely with the sauce and adds roundness throughout — but it feels rather overrun by the salt.
If they eased off the salt a little it would come out rather refined, I suspect. It is good, but as you eat on, the salt tires you slightly. Having a highball meant I got through it without minding much, but on its own it might be hard going.
And this is the famous one, the taishio ramen.
A golden broth so clear you can see through it. The beads of fat floating on the surface are lovely. I had a mouthful: the sea bream dashi soaks down your throat as a refined savour and a full fragrance. Very good. This one, by contrast, is restrained in salt, and the delicate flavour of the bream itself takes the lead. Yes — this broth is very good.
White rice in a green-glazed bowl, topped with flaked grilled salmon, glossy ikura and spring onion. A salmon-and-roe “parent and child” bowl. Pouring the bream dashi over it to make ochazuke is obviously going to be good. It comes as a set with the ramen — and together it makes a refined set indeed.
It is now very clear that if you go to a sea-bream shio ramen shop, you should eat the sea-bream shio ramen. That said, the mazesoba has real heft and the flavour is good, so thought of as something to drink with (at about half the quantity) it is a reasonable proposition. If you find tsukemen lacks punch, perhaps try the mazesoba.
May you meet something good to eat today too.
Taishio Soba Toka, Tobu Ikebukuro (ramen / Ikebukuro Station, Higashi-Ikebukuro Station, Toden-Zoshigaya Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.3
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
もう一杯どうぞ！
