Foodle

Recommended bowl: Handmade Lanzhou style

Lanzhou beef noodle soup is offered with nine different styles of noodles to choose from, hand-pulled to order. Recommended are the extra wide 'dākuwan' flat noodles, which measure 3-4 centimeters in width. Master Ma-san is Chinese Canadian, and prior to moving to Japan, he lived and worked in the U.S. for several years. His full time job is still in IT, so he only opens on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Holidays. His relatives run one of the top restaurants in Lanzhou, which is where some of the ingredients are shipped from. One hundred percent halal, everything handmade in the shop. Ma-san claims Japan has superior water for noodle making, hence some of the best Lanzhou noodles in the world are in Japan. Open since August 2017. Less

Recommended bowl: Rich, thick soup

This is the home base of a well known ramen group with a strong brand across the Kanto Region. The bowls of tsukemen come with a rich tonkotsu gyokai soup, made from pork bones, chicken carcasses, gyokai and vegetables. No MSG. Thick noodles are house-made using 100% Japanese wheat. The soup comes topped with Kagoshima-sourced katsuobushi, freshly shaved to a width of .01 mm after the orders are taken. Run by president Tamagawa-san, there are now 16 shops in the Gyoku group (as of mid 2020). Five of them serve this Gyoku menu, 11 other shops have different concepts. Original Kawasaki flagship open since 2008. Less