Recommended bowl: Top class tantanmen

La-Show-Han is one of Tokyo's top tantanmen specialists. Master Okada-san lived in Hong Kong for years and speaks Chinese. He has studied the spices and flavors used in traditional dandanmien, along with other Asian cooking traditions. He serves several tantanmen variations at his shop, from a standard Chinese-derived tantanmen to a bowl that uses Thai chilies for a Southeast Asian influence and kick. He even serves a classic shoyu ramen. But if you ask Okada-san for his personal recommendation, he will invariably suggest 'premium shiru-nashi-tantanmen.'

The dish is served without soup. It's just choice noodles over a bed of heavily spiced ground pork, with a thick sauce of chilies, sesame, Szechuan peppercorns and peanuts, along with several other ingredients we've yet to identify. This is a bowl you eat maze-style by mixing up all of the ingredients at the outset like you're saucing a pasta.

Hot tip: The serving size here isn't huge, so big eaters are advised to order extra noodles (just tell the staff, 'omori,' when you're entering your order in the ticket machine).