Ramen Jiro Shinagawa / ラーメン二郎品川店 - Shinagawa

Many things can be said about Ramen Jiro, and many things have been said before, therefore I would like to skip the long introduction and point towards this Ramen Jiro Guide by Cody from Ramenguidejapan.com and for some spoken words and moving pictures, check out our visit to Ramen Jiro in Shinjuku and Ramen Jiro in Meguro.

The Shinagawa location looks very promising from the outside and inside, since the grimiest and dirtiest locations are often the best in terms of flavor. It shows clear priorities, flavor over fashion (and cleanliness). I dig this old fashioned look, but I can understand that not everyone is a fan of mold stained counters.

Through many stomach wrangling Jiro visits, I have learned to go with the smallest bowl available and refrain from adding meat (except in the Meguro Jiro), even if the prices make it very tempting. I went with the sho / 小 bowl for 750 Yen and added negi (green onion) for 100 Yen, expecting some sliced and pickled or seasoned negi, but it was just cut raw negi. A bit disappointing.

As you all know by now, you can modify Jiro bowls to a great extent once you get asked “ninniku wa?”, which is a question specifically about adding garlic, but can be used to add more veggies, raw garlic, additional tare seasoning and pork back fat. I went with my standard “ninniku abura karame” to add raw garlic, pork back fat on top and extra tare. I don’t go for extra veggies, as the regular amount of veggies is usually already enough for me. I don’t subscribe to the veggie mountain building exercises, but you do you. Go mashi mashi on those veggies if you want.

The bowl itself comes with about 250-300 grams of noodles, a very manly portion already, you won’t be hungry after this. I was a bit disappointed that the pork back fat is quite unseasoned, maybe I got used to great seabura at some of the recent shops I went to. The soup was not emulsified at all and on the mild side on the Jiro scale. I would have liked some more punch and funk in there. The noodles were quite standard, a bit short for my liking, but no big complaint here.

Overall this has probably been my least favorite Ramen Jiro store so far, although I definitely had worse Jiro style bowls at other shops (non Jiro brand). It’s still probably the best Jiro style bowl around Shinagawa, or at least I am not aware of any better bowls in the area. Therefore if you’re around there and have that Jiro ramen craving, you would not making a big mistake with getting in line at this shop.