Setagaya Shinagawa

really good ramen and soup. my first real authentic japanese ramen on my first trip to japan. definitely not my last. soup was real good

Probably closer to a 3-​star by Japanese standards, definitely a 4-​star by Bay Area standards.
I decided to eat here after stumbling out of Shinagawa station extremely hungover, looking for something starchy to erase all traces of the drinker’s remorse from the night before. I actually meant to go to the first ramen place I saw in the Mentatsu complex (I believe it was called Nankotsu?) because it seemed to have the biggest line out of the 6 – 8 ramen joints there, but my initial intrigue with the place became the very reason why I avoided it in the end.
The wait wasn’t too long; I got to the restaurant around 1pm and was in within 6 minutes — the food, like most ramen joints, came out almost immediately after I was shown to my seat.
They do have a tsukemen option (which seems to be the trend), kurobuta pork gyoza, nikudon and etc., but I figured I’d start with the original first; the Setagaya Ramen itself is a shouyu-​broth ramen (with a hint of savory bitter, so I’m assuming the base stock is made from chicken) which comes with all the toppings the establishment offers. The noodle is straight up egg and medium thick; it didn’t absorb too much of the broth and did have kind of a glutinous consistency to it.
Whereas the broth and the noodles were pretty solid, the toppings was where Setagaya fell a little short for me. The chashu was pretty standard issue other than being a bit on the small side; the onsen tamago was poached, but a good majority of the yolk was starting to harden already; the kizami nori/​seaweed didn’t really do anything with the noodles, whereas its addition usually adds some sort of flavor or some sort of added consistency to the noodles.
Setagaya is currently running a lunch special where they give you a kind of toned-​down version of their namesake ramen, but with four giant slabs of chashu instead of the «all-​topping option.» I’ll probably have to give it a try the next time I’m stranded at Haneda and hope it changes my mind about Setagaya’s slightly «sub-​par» toppings.