マスターヌードル

Urban street fashion collaborations are nothing new. You can sport a North Face x Supreme jacket with some Puma x Evisu jeans and a pair of Adidas x Star Wars kicks. But when relevant website hypebeast mentioned a fashion x ramen collaboration, I was surprised. I was also totally into it.

The adventure began early, as did the line. I waited here for 45 minutes.

And I waited here for another 45 minutes.

The collab was between mastermind JAPAN, a street fashion brand aimed at people who want skulls on everything they wear. It is also aimed at those with large wallets. Expect to pay over $100 for a t-shirt.

By the way, this was the best dressed ramen line I’ve ever waited in. At least half the people were decked out in mastermind gear. Even those who had an obvious disregard for personal hygiene were wearing Bape or XLarge.

The collaboration is with Hide-Chan ramen. Hide-Chan might sound familiar to American ramen lovers, since they were voted best in New York a few years back. It’s your standard white tonkotsu shop in Japan. Overseas in the Big Apple, they offer a few more menu items, like a strange sounding meatless ramen and lots of side dishes. Actually, the vegetable one was one of two styles available at this event.

But first the shop.

Contemporary Fix is a stylish shop, with only a sparse selection of actual clothes for sale.

Thats the end of my shop review, lets get to the ramen.

Excellent. This was rich, creamy tonkotsu at its finest. They really brought it for this bowl. Everything was top tier, especially the Iberico pork roasted in black sugar. Speaking of black…

Black benishoga. (Kuroshoga?)

Black mentaiko rice. (photographed by a guy in a black leather jacket)

Black noodles.

Wontons with black filling. They are meant to be broken open, releasing the spicy black oil inside.

What an awesome idea.

And of course the special black bowl.

I may have mentioned the slightly higher than average price of the clothing here. The ramen was no different. At just under 3000 yen, I wont be coming back too often. Not that I could, as this is just a 3 day pop-up shop that took over a cafe.