Kirari (Kyoto-shi, Fushimi-ku)

つけ麺 きらり
つけめん きらり
Tsukemen Kirari

Norinori tsukemen: 19 / 20

This shop is special – this is obvious already from the outside, with people inconfortably queueing on the elevated rim of the pavement. I had been there a few months ago to try their shioton ramen, and had been so enthusiastic that it was clear to me I had to come back to try their "norinori" tsukemen. A day of plum blossom hunt in Kyoto was the occasion for this.

Broth: A very thick tonkotsu gyokai that sticks perfectly to the noodles – in a somehow similar fashion to Fuunji in Tokyo, although not as sweet (because it’s tonkotsu, and not torigara, as far as I know), and with maybe a more pronounced gyokai taste. The soup is so thick, and sticks so much to the noodles, that I basically finished all of it with my noodles (although I had order the regular, "nami" size, not the big one!) You also get a piece of lemon that you can press into the broth, but I don’t think it’s worth doing so. And I did unfortunately put too much of dashi in my soup wari, so this part was not a great success.

Noodles: Thick noodles with an egg taste, not very salted, very mochi mochi, just perfect – they were kind of hard to slurp though.

Meat: A few cubes of onctuous, delicious meat, with a very melting fat.

Egg: Two halves of a sublime egg: tasty white, whose taste is progressively submerged by the intensity of the gooey yolk.

Toppings: Many sheets of nori and some white onion in the bowl, that both fit perfectly well with the broth. Three very thick, fibrous menma, not so salted – they had a flavor that was definitely familiar, but I could not put a name on it (if you ate there and have any idea, please leave a comment below).

Look at this tsukemen, proud like a peacock making the wheel. And proud it can be: very simply, this tsukemen is perfect. Your personal preferences might make you lean towards other dishes, but like at Takakura Nijo, I cannot think of any flaw. If you are on your way between Osaka and Kyoto on the Keihan line, do yourself a favor and stop here. Icing on the cake: the employees are very friendly.

More info on ramendb.

Other review: Philoramen (for the shio-tonkotsu ramen)

Mengenso (Osaka-shi, Kita-ku)

麺元素
めんげんそ
Mengenso

Shio ramen: 17 / 20
(魚元素ラーメン, 塩)

Tori paitan with spicy miso : 17 / 20
(鶏元素ラーメン, 辛みそ付き)

Naka naka ramen: 17 / 20
(中々)

Naka naka ramen with ontama and seaweed: 17 / 20

Being talked to in a (good!) English by a friendly waiter when approaching a ramen restaurant is a rare experience - so when this restaurant happens to be one of the best in the area, that’s definitely something not to be missed for the non-Japanese speaker. Accompanied by my family, we sat at one of the two tables at the back of the room. We had the shio ramen, a tori paitan with a side spoon of spicy miso, and two bowls of their signature dish, the naka naka, a mix of shio and tori paitan (we ordered one of them with some added nori, and an onsen tamago replacing the regular half ajitama). But the diversity of their dishes does not stop there, they also have a shoyu tuskemen and a shoyu ramen! Let’s start with the shio:

Broth: Where most shio are too light in taste, this one has a very intense and delicious stock taste. Press the sudachi in your broth after you’ve eaten half of it to give some pleasant citrus-twist.

Noodles: Well cooked, neither firm nor soft, just a perfect middle point.

Meat: To some extent, the letdown of this otherwise perfectly crafted bowl: two slices of lean, firm pork with some taste of brine - not bad, but not remarkable either.

Egg: Half of a perfect slightly sweet ajitama: a white part strong in taste, and a firm-but-gooey yolk that is exactly what you need for a shio broth.

Toppings: The nori gave a very pleasant marine twist. You get a generous amount of sweetish menma, which had the classical mix of texture - crunchy under the teeth, and soft inside - brought to the point of perfection! A few small shrimps, chili stripes and negi.

What a delight! When finishing my bowl, the concentration of spices with the sweet menma formed an absolutely delectable mix. If you like shio ramen, you HAVE to try it, you won’t find much better broth around (although it's kind of a tie with Shiogensui - review to come!), and everything but the meat is just perfect.

Let me now say a few words about the other dishes, which have nothing to envy to this one.

The tori paitan has a shoyu tare and was obviously thicker, but not too much compared to your regular tori paitan - it was more creamy than thick. The chicken taste was not so present, but there were some pleasant bits of dry onions and a generous amount of pepper. The spicy miso was excellent and it was good to have it on the side, so that you can decide how much you want to add. A hearthy (but not overwhelming) winter dish.

The naka naka, which is a mix of the shio and the tori paitan, was, well, intermediate in taste. A bit creamy, with a beautiful variety of flavors.

If you choose to take the runny onama rather than the hard ajitama, you can mix it in the soup, which becomes then nicely thicker.

All these variants are excellent in their own way and I honestly cannot chose one over the others. I would just recommend, if you don’t mind spicyiness, to pay the additional twenty yen to get the spicy miso side spoon (in case you take the naka naka or tori paitan) - you can then try it and chose whether you want to add some or not. Interestingly, since the naka naka is a mix between a tori paitan with shoyu tare and a shio ramen, if you order it with the spicy miso spoon, you will then get a rare example of a spicy shio-shoyu-tori paitan-miso ramen! Try to make sense of the traditional four categories of ramen after that... Will a shop go further and add some niboshi and tonkotsu to the mix?

More info on ramendb.

Other reviews: Friends in Ramen