Hesd'ramen (France, somewhere the middle of a secret forest)

As I went back to France to see my family, they had prepared a surprise for me. You bet it is what you think it was - a ramen!

 (no, don't worry, we didn't eat it with fork and knife)

No industrial low-quality ramen here, totally home-made! And I must say I was impressed: a very tasty tonkotsu-shoyu broth, with a strong taste of rustic pork; pleasant, fat, firm noodles; a good, tender chashu; and a very well cooked ajitama, with a gooey yolk as it should be, on the hard side, and a strong taste of shoyu infusing the white part. Only salt was a little bit off-balance, but overall, that was a very professional ramen.

As I would discover later, this was quite akin to Wakayama-style ramen.

Bravo la famille!

Rakunijin (Osaka-shi, Kita-ku)

洛二神
らくにじん
Rakunijin

Iwashi ramen: 16 / 20

After Fusuma ni Kakero, Ibuki, Mengenso, Strike Ken and Gunjo, it had been a while I wanted to visit this highly praised ramen restaurant in my beloved area of Temma. Finally, here I am, and I order one of their intriguing special dishes: the iwashi (sardine) ramen.

Broth: The first sip gave me the impression to drink the mixed content of a can of sardines. Later, the taste became milder, more inbetween the canned sardine and the niboshi: the usual niboshi pungency, but with a more intense taste. Original and delicious.

Noodles: Thin and straight, and not so firm.

Meat: The thin slice of pork looked like reassembled meat and did not look promising. That was a wrong impression: it had an original and good peppery taste.

Toppings: Some aburaage in the bowl, why not... A couples of crunchy slabs of menma that tasted more like fresh bamboo, peppered with shichimi - a nice twist. And a sheet of nori that fit well with the broth, as usual with niboshi.

A very good bowl that every niboshi amateur should try. Note that they also have a wafu chuka soba, a 2004 chuka soba and a thick, fish tsukemen - guess I'll have to come back!

UPDATE: The wafu chuka soba was good (review to come some day) but I was more impressed by the iwashi ramen.

More info on ramendb.

Other review: Friends in Ramen