Ramen Wrap Up

My hot bowl of carnage down at Jiro demanded some ramen recovery time. See "Oodles of Noodles". Two days of tofu, natto, and saba was all I needed before my appetite for ramen, also known as shina-soba, returned. Note- use caution with the word 'shina', it is highly offensive to the Chinese. What made comparing Ikkei to Jiro difficult was the great differences between the two. Like apples and oranges, both fruit that grow on trees, these were two bowls of noodles but of extreme differences. In contrast to Jiro that serves a dish many Tokyoites refuse to refer to as 'ramen', Ikkei is typical of the vast majority of ramen-ya punctuated all over the city. Nothing too remarkable about the food. What you can expect is a basic tonkotsu base, a little heavy on the lard chips, with noodles (frozen) that are sharper than most. Heavy on the bean sprouts (mixed with rayu) and some lopsided cha-shu arranged haphazardly with a blind hand all for the median rate of 800 yen. The unusual interior, however, entertains over the ho-hum of the food. The owner (a tattooed bandanna man) jams the place with colorful hand painted signs and knick knacks that tell-tale of his obsession with Elvis, motorcycles, pin-up girls, and Americana. The food was not bad, just common and worlds away in terms of fair comparison with Jiro's bistro of exploding bowls. Which is why it makes the mystery behind the difference in patronage much more confounded.