Zenkoku Ramen Grand Prix 2021

The Zenkoku Ramen Grand Prix 2021 is a new ramen festival, organized by the Oktoberfest organizers, or so it seems at least. Information about the festival seems to be only available on Oktober-Fest.jp. Seven ramen shops from all over Japan offer their bowls for two weeks in a festival spot right in front of Shinjuku station. Bowls cost 800 Yen a pop, not terrible, but also not very cheap, considering that you get a bit less than you would in a regular restaurant. But good value isn’t necessarily what drives people to festivals, but rather the chance to try something new. Oftentimes this is the chance to try really unique and never seen again bowls, which don’t really make financial sense or are too complicated to make everyday in a ramen store.

Cody from Ramenguidejapan.com suggested we go and take a look (and have some bowls of course), so off we went.

Tuna Ramen by Menya Keshin - Fukushima

For the first bowl of the festival, I went for a quite interesting bowl made by Menya Keshin, a ramen shop in Fukushima City. The soup wasa thick and heavy tuna based soup, which has the distinct flavor of grilled tuna. It was so thick, it could have easily been served as a tsukemen like at Tomita and similar stores. The noodles were also quite thick and worked well with the gravy-like soup. While at first a bit shocked by the punching flavor, it honestly grew a bit on me and I could imagine having another go at this bowl. It’s quite rare to find soups made with tuna, as it is quite difficult to work the quite strong flavor into a soup.

Hokkaido Spicy Miso Ramen by Kinjiro Shokudo - Asahikawa

This bowl by a shop from Hokkaido lured us in with its vibrant colors and promises of miso and spiciness, which, as most of you know, is usually a great combination. I don’t know what happened with this bowl though. First obvious flaw: There was zero spiciness. How do you even get a bowl this red without making it at least a bit spicy? The next thing was an incredible sweetness. I can only imagine the amount of sugar they must have dumped in, as there was no other discernible flavor that would have pointed to a sweet ingredient. Yes, there was also some miso flavor, however it feels like they mixed the tare into some water and called it a day. The noodles were worse than some instant noodles I had in the past. Probably the worst bowl I had in 2021 so far and it soured the event experience a bit for me. But after all, you can’t always get winners at these festivals, picking random bowls from shops you never heard of is half the fun.

At least there was a stall with German beer to soothe the hurt ramen soul.