花田流焼肉炭家

I have heard that there are around 9000 places to eat ramen in Tokyo. This is, of course, counting everywhere ramen is served. Chain ramen shops, family restaurants (i.e. Denny’s), Chinese dives, and in this case, Korean barbecue. Usually these outlying ramen shops don’t make it to Ramen Adventures, because, well, they tend to suck.

Sumiya, a nondescript Korean barbecue place a few stops out of Shinjuku, proved me wrong.

The word 〆 (shime) can be added to the front of a menu item to indicate that it is something to be eaten after the rest of the food. In this case, the shimenoramen in question is an insanely kodawari bowl made with freshwater clams from Lake Jusanko in Aomori, breaking all stereotypes that non-ramen-shop ramen is bad.

Usually reserved for high end bowls of miso soup, these are some of the best of the best in Japan. Add to that noodles from Shimane Prefecture, and a simple Japanese broth made from high-quality konbu and katsuo, and this was the ultimate shime after some fatty cuts of prime beef.

Apologies for forgetting to take shots of the meat. We were filming for an upcoming episode of オスカルX21! and I didn’t have time to get the camera out. On air May 9th!

Wow, I was shocked by this bowl. Most of the time, shime ramen just means that you dump noodles into a pot of whatever was eaten before. Usually leftover soup in a hot pot type of dish. Most of the time, shime ramen is just a delivery method to get some post-meat carbs.