Recommended bowl: Clean & Refreshing

Many ranked Sukoyaka among the best new shops to open in 2017. Shop master Tsuchiya-san grew up in the local Mitaka area and later served his apprenticeship at Honda, an influential shop in Higashi Jujo. At Sukoyaka, he says his goal is to serve his hood clean, high-quality ramen that's healthy enough to eat every day. The shop menu includes shoyu, shio, niboshi and tsukemen — each is immaculate. The soup that goes into the shoyu and shio is a clean but complicated blend made from Hombinosu clams, asari cockles, Hokkaido kelp, bonito, niboshi and chicken carcasses. It's impressively light. Three kinds of carefully sourced shoyu make the shoyu tare, while the niboshi bowl involves four varieties of dried sardine. The toppings are done in the Tokyo new school style — slow-cooked pork and chicken, an aromatic egg – and the shoyu and shio bowls get an additional dollop of homemade tartufata (olives, mushrooms, herbs and truffle). No MSG. With his housemade noodles (prepared from all-Japanese flour), Tsuchiya-san says he is striving for a maximally crisp biting texture. Sukoyaka's ramen is so clean you're apt to leave feeling refreshed. Less