A note on the words: miso is fermented soybean paste, and karamiso is the spicy version used as a ramen base. Sansho is Japanese pepper, which makes the tongue tingle. Chashu is the braised pork, and tsukemen is the dipping style, mentioned here only as a measure of how substantial the noodles are.
Otsukaya 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.
So: along Sotobori-dori, somewhere between Ichigaya and Iidabashi. There is a famous ramen shop there, called Otsukaya. It used to be a shop called Menya Kururi, and reopened as this. And remarkably, the ramen is spicy miso ramen and nothing else — a shop that has made its choice.
I want miso ramen.
That feeling had grown strong that day, so I dropped in on the way home.
How does one queue and get in? First you look inside. If a seat is free, buy a ticket from the machine and go straight in. If not, you queue on the pavement out front, on the road side.
It was full that day, but I was first in the queue, so it looks as though I shall eat. Lucky.
The ticket machine has only spicy miso ramen, extra noodles, a small rice, and a seasoned egg. Clear and good.
And best of all,
there is a service where asking for fewer noodles gets you half a seasoned egg. For those of us who cannot eat very much, this is a welcome thing. When ordering, you are asked whether you want garlic and ginger in it. Of course I had both. (I did not ask, but I wonder whether one can have extra of each.)
Curry powder, ground chilli, black pepper, sansho, chilli oil, vinegar. There is a great deal here to change the flavour with.
Is this ramen, though?
What catches the eye when it lands is the broth covering the surface of the bowl. Broth may not even be the word: it is thick enough that a spoon stood in it might stay upright. And yet lift the noodles a little and the broth has worked right down to the bottom, and the way it comes up with them makes this close to a bowl in thickened sauce. Garlic and ginger rise with the steam, and it smells wonderful from the moment it arrives.
Let us eat. One slurp and, against the force of the look of it, the heat is surprisingly mild. The richness and sweetness of miso and the punch of garlic come together thickly, and rather than heat it feels like savour running riot. It is dense and yet somehow easy to eat, and habit-forming; the chopsticks do not stop.
The noodles are very thick and wavy, chewy and firm, and they haul this heavy broth up with them. Each strand has enough substance that you might take it for tsukemen. The toppings are diced chashu (this is good), vegetables stir-fried to order, and spring onion laid on top. Their crisp bite makes a good rest between mouthfuls of the richness.
And once you have taken the measure of it, the fun is in changing the flavour.
Partway through, working ginger into the noodles lightens the broth at a stroke, while garlic adds punch, and both are good. Vinegar gives an acidity that makes it easier to eat, and with chilli and curry powder lined up as well, it is a pleasure to be able to shift the heat and the fragrance a little at a time to your own taste.
I kept mixing in a little of this and a little of that, wondering which was best and trying to find the finest version — and finished the bowl before I got there.
A new kind of miso ramen. Good.
Since they do nothing but spicy miso ramen, I think you can eat with only a short queue on a weekday evening, so do try this new sort of miso ramen. In truth I went imagining an ordinary miso ramen and was a little taken aback, but eating it, it is mellow and good. I had asked for fewer noodles to begin with, but with a broth this rich, adding the small rice at the end to make a porridge of it sounds very good indeed.
May you meet something good to eat today too.
Otsukaya (ramen / Ichigaya Station, Ushigome-kagurazaka Station, Iidabashi Station)
Tabelog evening rating ★★★☆☆ 3.7
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
