Ramen Rikido / らぁめんりきどう - Gifu

Rikido is a tsukemen style ramen shop in Gifu city, which is famous for their various types of noodles that are served with their tsukemen dipping soup, especially their flat and thick noodles called “hirauchimen”.

Generally considered to be the best ramen shop in Gifu city and even Gifu prefecture, Rikido flashes across every ramen nerd’s social media from time to time and makes everyone pause, because of the unusual noodles that are served there.

*Vending machine at Ramen Rikido with a total of 54 options, including tsukemen and ramen.*

The menu is quite extensive and convoluted with a total of 54 buttons that you can press on their vending machine. Probably one of the vending machines with the most options out there in the ramen world, even though Rikido actually does not offer that many different items.

To break it down a little bit:

All the yellow buttons are tsukemen
The purple buttons are ramen
The tsukemen with two different types of noodles can be found in the buttons at the top right. The lower one adding more chashu. Get exactly this option.
The white options are small portions of either tsukemen on the upper end and ramen on the lower end.
The red button on the right lower side is the one that add the flat noodles. Get this additionally!
The blue buttons on the right add further toppings like egg, nori, menma and negi.
The green button on the lower right adds 100 grams of noodles.
The final two blue buttons on the lower right offer otsumami negimenma (top) and bottled beer (bottom).

Beyond all the different items, you can also select the noodle amount, ranging from 130 grams to 300 grams at no extra cost. You can add more noodles in 100 gram steps by paying 160 Yen per step.

Overview of all available noodles at Ramen Rikido. — *Overview of all available noodle styles at Ramen Rikido.*

Rikido tsukemen comes with 2 types of thin and flat noodles if you picked the right option on the vending machine, one standard type with refined wheat and one made with whole wheat, which gives it a dark color and some clearly visible specks. As an addition, you can order their so called hirauchimen, which are super wide flat noodles. This way, you end up with 3 types of noodles next to your bowl of tsukemen dipping soup.

The soup at Rikido is clear shoyu base, but very sharp and punching. — *Punching and sharp shoyu dipping soup. Straight into my veins please.*

The dipping soup itself is another highlight. It is a clear style of dipping soup, loosely related to the Taishoken style of tsukemen soups. However, the flavor is way more concentrated, sharp and rich. It's as if you cross a Taishoken style tsukemen soup in terms of flavor with the wild and over the top punch of a Jiro style soup.

*Almost falling apart juicy pork chashu, well seasoned all throughout.*

One last thing to note is that you should absolutely get extra chashu. Again, the chashu reminds me more of a Jiro style chashu than anything else. Think cut chunks of almost overbraised, close to falling apart when you try to pick it up, and strongly seasoned to be enjoyable just by itself.

*Tsukemen at Rikido with 3 different noodles and extra chashu.*

All in all, every single element of this dish is extraordinary and justifies a visit. But all three combined, probably make it one of my favorite ramen dishes in Japan.