らーめんと甘味処九月堂

The recent search for charming little ramen shops took me to the upscale shopping district north of Shibuya station. Within a minute of this ramen shop, you will find a Ships, a Beams, a G Star Raw, and a Comme de concept shop. I don’t expect the average ramen slurper to know what those are (except the guys at Ken Ken in SF), but patterned shirts with bow ties sums it up fairly well.

What I am getting at is that this is not your typical ramen neighborhood. It is more of a craft beer bar followed by fancy crepes. It takes a special kind of ramen to work here.

Is the white leather couch too much? Probably. Anyways, ramen comes kotteri or asari. Heavy or light.

The light was quite nice. Cafe style in every way, the light fish broth was accented by grated yuzu citrus. A standard recipe for success.

Too bad I got the kotteri. It was a big miss. Salty and pungent, I could only finish about half. There were some temperature issues as well, the soup and some toppings felt cold. Maybe it was a timing mistake with the ordering of both styles. Regardless, do not order the kotteri!

Nice place to relax though. And thanks to the aforementioned bad ramen, I saved room for desert.

Yuzu sorbet in a yuzu jelly. Fantastic. There are also some enormous parfaits that make this a proper date spot for someone looking to impress a lovely lady with something sweet . . . or a cool dude with some hot noodles (asari!)