みつか坊主本店

Osaka is such a strange, fun city. You never really know what you are going to get. This time around, it was excellent miso ramen with local craft beers.

My first time to this part of town. Hotarugaike Station is way up on the north side of Osaka. It might even be in Hyogo Prefecture. Regardless, the Osaka train system is legit, and you can be here in no time.

Are you lying? It’s miso! In a pudding! Yeah, they have their own free paper. The cover of this one is advertising a miso pudding that the shop sells. Miso and soy sauce are sometimes used in desserts.

Draft beer from Minoh, Osaka’s most famous craft beer maker. Let’s go for the pint.

That pint is massive! Or is her head small? Regardless, this is a spot to come, drink, and take your slurping a bit slower.

The ramen menu has a few choices. It was my first time, but some regulars told me that it is always changing. This time, it was between the white, red, or spicy miso.

The white was pretty good. Not as refined as the miso I usually recommend, but this bowl matched perfectly with the IPA I was drinking. The whole thing had a kind of . . . Osaka vibe.

They use a white miso from nearby Kyoto as a base. Added to this are misos from Nagano (made with rice) and northern Japan (heavy on the salt). It’s all about balance!

For your reference, the red miso uses a base of Aichi Prefecture miso that has been aged about three years, and the spicy bowl utilizes a Korean spicy miso.