This week’s travel dream: Tokyo, one noodle at a time

All you need to know about Tokyo can be summed up in a bowl of ramen, said Matt Gross in The New York Times. The simple concoction of broth and noodles, brought from China by Confucian missionaries in the 17th century, is an essential part of the Japanese capital’s history and culture. The steamy bowls of flavor incite passion among Japanese and foreigners alike, and have inspired blogs, magazines, movies, multilingual guidebooks, and their own museum, Tokyo’s Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. How much do the Japanese love their noodles? Combine “New Yorkers’ love of pizza, hot dogs, and hamburgers, throw in some Southern barbecue mania, and you’ve still only begun to approximate Tokyo’s obsession with ramen.”

Tokyo is a city that can often seem closed off to “those who don’t know the social codes.” Yet all I had to do was mention my quest to find the perfect bowl of ramen, and I was “besieged with recommendations, reminiscences, and requests” to join strangers for meals. That’s how I ended up in a “tidy” alley, around the corner from a 7-Eleven, searching for Ganko, one of Tokyo’s roughly 4,137 ramen shops. I ducked under a ragged tarp to find a chef methodically filling bowls with “careful dollops of flavoring and fats, ladles of rich broth, noodles cooked just al dente.” All was silent until serving time. Then the slurping began—“long, loud, and enthusiastic” displays of appreciation.

After that meal, I wandered Tokyo for a week, tasting all the ramen I could consume. I even went to Ramen Jiro, the “White Castle of ramen,” a chain that serves a version of the dish that’s “cheap, unrefined,” and breaks all the rules. But I uncovered the perfect bowl at Ikaruga, a peaceful “oasis” where all the waiters wear “Zenned-out smiles.” Ikaruga’s ramen was exquisitely balanced, from the texture of the noodles down to its tender, “caramel-sweet” slices of pork. Yet the best part of my search wasn’t discovering the perfect bowl; it was making connections in a city “where connections can be hard to make.”

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Contact: Ramentokyo.com