Ramen is a noodle dish, and there are many different styles of ramen. Tonkotsu ramen consists of pork-based broth. With pork being one of my favorite meats, I suspected I at least wouldn't dislike eating at Ichiran.
Ichiran is a chain restaurant in Japan, and it specializes in tonkotsu ramen. In fact, it serves only tonkotsu ramen. You can customize your dish by adding extra ingredients or selecting different amounts of flavoring of firmness of noodles, but it is essentially just one dish served in the entire restaurant. And Ichiran does an amazing job with that one dish.
The first thing that drew me towards Ichiran was the price. For just the "basic" bowl of ramen, without adding any extras, you pay less than $7 USD. In any city, let alone Tokyo, that's a bargain for a meal, and your stomach leaves satisfied with both quantity and taste. The basic bowl consists of noodles, broth, green onion, garlic, sliced pork, and Ichiran's own red sauce. If you don't want onion, garlic, pork, or red sauce, you can specify that in your order.
To order, you start at a vending machine. You insert cash and then press buttons to make your selection. Your selections are printed out on little slips of paper printed by the machine. You can just order the basic bowl of ramen, but if you know you want to add additional ingredients (boiled egg, seaweed, extra pork, extra noodles, etc.), you can select those buttons for a nominal extra fee. (An egg costs $1, and refilling your noodles is just a bit over $1.) You can also order drinks or dessert at this point. Don't worry, if you don't order extras and decide later while you're eating that you'd like to add a boiled egg or want more noodles, you can order them at your seat.
After the vending machine, you get a larger slip of paper that allows you to customize your noodles. For example, you can choose how firm you want the noodles cooked, if you want pork, how much garlic or red sauce you want, the type of green onion you want, how strong you want the broth flavor. I selected "medium" for everything, 1/2 red sauce, green onion, with pork, and the maximum garlic that didn't incur an additional charge.
Waiting for your seat can be a bit like a game. Ichiran is structured kind of like a bar with dividers separating each seat. As one person finishes their meal and leaves, the next person in line takes their place. If you're there with a group, it will likely take longer to get seated if you want to sit together, since you'd have to wait for multiple seats next to each other to become available. If you don't mind being split up, then the turnover happens pretty quickly, since the dividers help people focus on eating rather than just sitting around. Of course in popular areas, you'll still have to wait a while outside before being able to order and then wait a while inside before a seat becomes available.
Once you sit down, you put your order slips at the edge of the window of your individual booth and call for the waiter using a button on the table. They'll take your order slips and after not much wait, you get your food. If you decide you want to order extra noodles or ingredients, there's another slip in your booth that you can fill out and pay for at the table. There's a curtain that they pull down to cover the window of your booth between you and the wait staff, so if you need to call them over for some reason during the meal, just press the button. Unless you're getting more noodles, however, there really isn't any need for them. Just enjoy your meal, and when you're done, get up and leave.
Ichiran was one of my tastiest experiences in Tokyo. I loved it so much that I had it twice while I was in Tokyo. Normally I don't repeat meals when I'm visiting a new place because I want to try as much as possible, but this ramen was too good not to have again.
Now back in NYC, all the ramen here doesn't seem so great, especially when you take into account that it's more expensive. Why would I wait an hour for ramen that's twice as expensive and half as tasty? I've seen some articles saying Ichiran is going to open a location in NYC. When that finally happens, I hope they maintain the pricing and quality that I experienced in Japan. If they can make it work in Tokyo, a city that's more expensive and has more quality restaurant competition than NYC, wouldn't they be able to make it work here?
