A steal at just 500 yen — exceptional ramen, lunch only.
Mokuyoubi TEXT/KAGEHIRO WATANABE, PHOTO/SHUN TAKEBEFive minutes on foot from Nishisen 9-jo Asahiyama Koen Station. A ramen shop tucked quietly into a corner of a residential neighborhood. Inside, laid-back reggae plays softly, and a faint aroma of dried sardines drifts through the air. “Mokuyoubi” (Thursday) is an unpretentious shop just like that. The quirky name comes from the owner’s earlier days working at “Curry Damashii Destroyer” — he used to rent out the space on the restaurant’s regular closing day, Thursday, to serve ramen there. Even the walls, painted in the same red made famous by Miffy’s picture books, were carried over from Destroyer.
The current location came about when his old go-to ramen shop, "Menya Sanshiro," relocated to Saitama, and he took over the space as-is, going independent. Now open every day except the regular Sunday closing. The most popular item is the Niboshi Shoyu, made with anchovy and white-mouth dried sardines, 500 yen. It used to use hirako niboshi made from sardines, but now uses white-mouth niboshi from the Seto Inland Sea. Even though niboshi-based broth can vary in flavor from batch to batch, the fact that customers can always count on a delicious bowl speaks to the owner's daily trial and error.
The noodles are carefully made in-house. The temperature right after kneading, the thickness set at each of the three rolling stages — these subtle adjustments, combined together, shape the noodles' firmness and texture. "Noodles are fascinating," says the owner, who never stops researching ways to make them even better. The char siu is roasted in the oven at low temperature for just over two hours before being soaked in the sauce, resulting in a perfect match for the broth.
Business hours run until 4:30 PM, since, as the owner puts it, "the broth sometimes runs out..." A casual, delicious 500-yen bowl of ramen — well worth a lunchtime visit, Thursday or any other day.
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