Looking for a place to grab lunch while walking around the neighbourhood of Kuramae, we came across Genraku Ramen. Now I’m not usually a big ramen person - partially because for some reason there’s always long lines outside the good ones. But we must have come at a good time, because we managed to slip in without having to wait at all.
Although technically they serve your typical miso and shoyu ramens, Genraku’s specialty is how they fling rather a large amount of pork fat on top. And quite literally - they had these big metal strainers that they kind of do a throwing motion at, towards your bowl.
They do this before they give the bowl to you, mind! But as a result your ramen (and the sides of the bowl too) will be liberally coated in fat. Luckily they have tissues and a bottle of disinfectant at each table so you can wipe your hands afterwards.
I’m no ramen expert, but it tasted pretty good to me! And it was only in the range of 800 yen, so quite an affordable place to get your lunch. We had just visited Leaves where just a cup of coffee is in the 900 - 1500 yen range, so in comparison this felt like a very good deal indeed.
Outside the store was an art poster of the ramen shop. You might notice the little robot in the bottom right.
We spotted a much huger version of this guy on the side of a Toyoko Inn building (a popular hotel chain) nearby. Apparently Kuramae had a long history as a toy-manufacturing district, and this was a popular toy known as the “Mighty 8”.
This is a bit of a tangent - but not really worth making a separate post for - we also stopped by to get some canelés from Kuramae Cannele.
They had a hand-drawn map with a bunch of spots in the Kuramae area. Quite a few look interesting, notably Readin’ Writin’ BOOK STORE so I’ll have to come back.
It’s drawn by a local resident and artist called AiLeen.
Googling Kuramae, it seems to have been dubbed the “Tokyo’s Brooklyn” by one website, but then another site gives that title to Daikanyama (a very trendy neighbourhood) so it seems there’s a bit of competition going on.
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