Ramen Lovel / ラーメンラブル - Sangenjaya

Ramen Lovel (ラーメンラブル) is one of the best addresses for trying Takeoka Shiki ramen or Takeoka style ramen, which are quite unique in many ways.

This style of ramen is, who would have thought, from the Takeoka area of Futtsu city in Chiba prefecture. It is a very particular and unique style of ramen, which does not use any broth at all for the soup. Instead, they use hot water, a very strong soy sauce based seasoning tare, lots of MSG and a healthy helping of aroma oil.

*A glorious bowl of no-broth Takeoka Shiki style ramen*

If nobody told you, it would be impossible to guess that there isn't a broth as base. Where you would expect a pot of broth, they keep a pot of water at boiling temperature separately from their noodle boiling water. Although some shops in the Takeoka area will also use their noodle boiling water.

*Water for the soup on the left, water for the noodles behind the shop owner*

The next unique thing at this shop is the usage of a shoyu tare which is used in perpetuity, some call this a "mother sauce" or "infinity sauce". In Japanese it is called "tsugitashi". Here, they use the tare also as seasoning for their pork chashu. Over time, chashu and tare cross season each other. The tare ages in a sense and gets enriched more and more with the porky bbq flavors, which accumulate over time as the tare always gets refilled at the end of the day. A flavor which is basically impossible to recreate at home. As a topping you get a healthy helping of white crunchy onions which help cutting through the aggressive saltiness and strong flavor of the soup. The chashu is made to almost fall apart when picked up and has a great almost bbq-style flavor to it from the tare.

Nama noodles, freshly made as opposed to dried noodles which are the classic choice for Takeoka style ramen

Next point to know is that you can choose between to types of ramen, "nama" fresh ramen or dried ramen. The latter would be even more traditional when it comes to Takeoka Shiki ramen, but I recommend to go for the nama ramen.

Overall not necessarily a beginner bowl, but if you call yourself a ramen nerd, probably a store you want to hit in Tokyo, so you don't have to go all the way to Takeoka to try this style.