Foodle

Recommended bowl: Gyokai legend

Watanabe has been open since 2002, an established member of the new-school ramen movement. Run by master Watanabe-san, who owns a handful of ramen shops, however this was his first. A small shop down a quiet alley in Takadanobaba, with a small ticket machine and simple counter seating. The shop is known for serving a creamy, fish-heavy soup, which nowadays is not so uncommon; but this was one of the first to do it well. Both ramen and tsukemen are served, but ramen is what they are known for. The pieces of menma here are huge and very meaty. The noodles are made at the company's central kitchen, which supplies the shops in the group. Less

Recommended bowl: Maguro & sanma

Senkyu serves ‘sanmaguro ramen,’ a clean-tasting shoyu-based bowl made from a double soup of sanma/maguro (pacific saury/tuna) and special ‘daisen’ chickens. Master Matsumoto-san previously ran the original Ivan Ramen located right here in the same location. Run by American Ivan Orkin, this shop was famous for being the rare Tokyo ramen shop run by a non-Japanese. But when Ivan closed up and moved back to NYC a couple years ago, Matsumoto-san opened Senkyu in January 2016. He works solo, doing all of the prep, and making the noodles by hand in a room upstairs above the shop. Less