極濃麺家初代一本氣

Is it Yokohama style, or is it Hakata style?

It’s both! Or it’s neither! I don’t know the classification, but it is definitely good eating on the far east side of Tokyo.

It’s best said by the master himself, “Ippongi taste, Hakata style.”

Ippongi has received a few awards in the past, and if it wasn’t all the way out in Koiwa, I would have gone there sooner. In reality, it is less than 20 minutes from Tokyo station. It just feels far.

Ie-kei – Yokohama style – has a lot of misses in Japan. A standard feature of this style is choice. You can choose the thickness of the soup, how much oil is added, and the firmness of the noodles. I think this is a trick. By offering so much choice, a bad bowl of ramen can be blamed on the customer, not the shop.

Well, Ippongi doesn’t offer a choice. It just comes delicious. The pork flavor is strong, with little aftertaste.

I was a little sad that they didn’t have any of their custom nori seaweed sheets. Some shops imprint white text onto the dark green sheets. Some shops burn a little symbol on their egg. Others have crazy one-of-a-kind bowls. I dig that sort of thing.