The experience begins with picking a ramen dish among the 5 variations on offer in the vending machine. I picked a chicken & dashi based shoyu broth, laced with yuzu, a slice of grilled pork (chicken in my case because somehow the guy knew to ask if I wanted chicken instead), half portion seasoned boiled egg (nitamago), bamboo shoots (menma), mixture leaves (mizuna) and a piece of seaweed (nori). After all, a “soy sauce based soup with refreshing Yuzu citrus accent” sounded especially appealing after a 12-hour fast. The next step involves presenting your ticket to the server who then asks how much chi yu (chicken oil) you prefer in your broth; there are 2 options: “Tanrei” which is the AFURI classic and it blends just enough chi yu into the broth to create a delicately balanced soup, and “Maroaji” which sounds like the “Tanrei” kicked up an extra notch and results in a more robust broth with a “thicker mouthfeel.” The guy heartily recommended the latter, so I went with that. VERDICT... This ramen totally made my day! And it paired perfectly with the housemade yuzu highball. Best damn brunch I’d had in recent memory. #soogood #afuri #阿夫利 #柚子#yuzu #shoyu #maroaji #extrachiyu #mouthfeel #yuzushoyuramen #ebisu #tokyo #ramen #sootyeats🥢 #sootyinJP🇯🇵

One of the better sesame ramen I’ve had, I dare say even better than the CQYD (my sesame ramen go-to) for the chewier noodles and spicier, more savory broth. Also comes with a mini cake of freeze dried omelet.

BRIEF: “Hakata style ramen is tossed in shaved Italian truffle and truffle oil, complete with slices of torched charshu and a perfect sous vide egg.” SOOT’S BRIEF: My first time (I think?) trying a broth-less ramen and I think I love this combination (even with the Japanese-style charshu I tend not to love so much).

Creamy and full of umami, this was surprisingly tasty! Not bad for a $1.20 lunch.

House-made noodles made with fresh yuzu tossed in a house-blend soy and white ponzu. Paired them with crispy lightly battered tempura prawn, mushroom, sweet potato and onion, onsen egg, tempura sauce, shio kanbu and chives. This was light and refreshing.

original tonkotsu soup, fried garlic, green onions, ½ ramen egg, pork chashu, baby arugula, sesame seeds, and japanese seaweed. Rich and creamy broth that’s sooo good when you’re cold and hungry late in the day.

Ramen in rich, spicy, yuzu-laced broth with sous vide chicken

Custom-made Hakata noodles (tailor-cooked to your preferred texture) in roasted sesame pork bone soup with massive slices (or slabs?) of roasted chashu, white negi (leek), black fungus, bamboo shoots, laver and a thing of homemade spicy house secret sauce. A huge and hearty serving. I may have to skip dinner.

Too tired and overwhelmed from unpacking to go out for food. It’s a good thing I got this from the H-Mart in Seattle! 😌

I now get what the customers who tried hellamyeon in Jinny’s Kitchen mean about the heat not impressing you until it DOES: quite suddenly and forcefully in fact. I had to chug 2 cans of soda and take 2 breaks sucking ice cubes between ploughing through this bowl 🥵🔥🔥🔥🔥🥵

Instant tantanmen in broth flavored with garlic, salted pork bones with chili pepper. Not such a fan of the brothy version of this dish. I’d try the dry version if it were available.

BRIEF: “Flavored with bonito stock and soy sauce, the savory flavor of cod roe and butter makes it almost as if it was made by hand.” SOOT’S TAKE: This wasn’t as buttery as I thought it would be, but it definitely tasted seafood-y thanks to the cod roe and bonito.

Happy National Ramen Noodle Day! This one’s yuzu shio with whole grain noodle, egg and green onion in a yuzu-scented broth of seafood stock, chicken oil and the "umami of kelp", none of which I could detect (besides the yuzu). Maybe it’s my cold thats ruining it for me. 🍊🧂

Instant ramen in an instant tonkotsu broth of charred soy sauce and roasted garlic. Sounds better than it tastes. 🫤

Sinus-clearing despite mixing in just a portion of the chili packet.

It’s decent (and believe it or not), better than what I’ve had at the food court. I may drop an egg and some actual kimchi next time, when I finally get around to making some. Gotta say, I really like the chewiness of the noodles though.

Ahh…what I wouldn’t do for The Ultimate Rich and Creamy Vegan Ramen with Roasted Vegetables and Miso Broth! 1.5 hours to roil, toil and boil this broth of kombu, charred onion, charred ginger, charred garlic heads, essence of charred eggplant, fresh shiitake shroom stems, fresh beech shroom bottom stems, dried porcini shrooms, dried shiitakes shrooms, napa cabbage, leek and scallions. But I guess that ain’t enough. I go on to roast a bunch of sweet potatoes and maitake shrooms spiced with shichimi togarashi and then take some of that to puree with the broth-infused roasted garlic heads (skins off!!) to whisk into the broth because who doesn’t want a creamy broth layered with more flavor? But wait, the flavor profile remains incomplete until I make a shiitake-porcini-scallion-infused oil to create those little pools of glistening, flavorful fat you see on the soup surface (now don’t tell me ya don’t see 3 of them). Still, the flavors in this ramen bowl continue to evolve as I create a soy-based tare from fresh shiitake shroom caps, ginger, scallions, garlic, kombu and mirin. This tare is then used to douse the charred eggplant with toasted sesame. BUT, we’re still not done because there’s still a base of miso, Japanese sesame seed paste, minced garlic and shiitake-soy tare to prepare before we whisk it into a bowl of 1.5 hour broth. Then we blanch the raw ramen noodles in roiling, boiling salted water before immersing in the 1.5 hour broth and topping with spicy roasted sweet potatoes and that charred eggplant doused in that soy-shiitake tare. And I think we’re done? The Ultimate Rich and Creamy Vegan Ramen with Roasted Vegetables and Miso Broth has to be the ultimate test in endurance cooking. Took all of 4 hours. And it was cruelty-free.

$18 (before tax and service).

I tasted no coffee in this so I can only deduce the cappuccino refers to what appears to be an espuma of yuzu atop the base broth. It’s frothy but by no means light on flavor, and for that reason, much preferred to its blander counterpart at Afuri (Singapore branch).

Kimchi-ish convenience.

Spicy 🧄 & sesame oil infused broth.

I was a little ambivalent about this but it pleasantly surprised. Apparently cheese curry has been around a bit. This one happens to be an updated version with beef oil and diced beef added to the mix. It’s also being advertised as having “European style beef flavor.”

“Stir fried miso made from several kinds of miso from Hokkaido...” At $13, it was cheaper than the average ramen here, yet comparable, which for the most part, has not been spectacular. 😕

“soya-sauce flavoured broth impeccably balanced with yuzu aroma and delicate dashi” It was decent but not as robust as the broth I thoroughly enjoyed in their Tokyo branch (perhaps it was missing the chicken oil that the staff like to add after determining your preference). You didn’t have a choice between chicken and chashu either (which was a little disappointing for me).

A combination of their beef ramen and their char siew ramen: sauteed sliced US beef, Nagano pork char siew, 8-hour slow-roasted red wine boneless short rib, and house-made Japanese scallop-fish cake. This was more than a little much for me.

Yes, if you were a fly sitting on the rim of this bowl, it’d feel like you were staring into one of the La Brea tar pits, but rest assured it smelled better than the ones in LA. That the soup base was made with scallion and onion oil helped.

Having been wowed by Afuri’s ramen, I had to bring some home with me. Not the same, but still decent and unique.

My first bowl of ramen in Japan occurred in what is known as a Flavor Concentration Booth located in Shibuya, Tokyo after a week of traveling in the Kansai region. I am generally not crazy about tonkotsu ramen because of the distinct odor associated with pork in the broth. However, ICHIRAN claimed to be the origin of "tonkotsu soup with no bad odors." Given such promise on a cool, rainy night and after a long day of traveling, I went for it. No doubt, the broth was very aromatic but I could still detect a hint of boar taint. Nonetheless, the side of kikurage mushrooms helped distract from this. 🍜

Not as flavorful as the one at DTF but theirs is dry, so maybe I just don’t like the broth-based version? 🤷🏻‍♀️