TL;DR - in the Hirafu area, one of the best priced restaurants, no frill good ramen (not mind blowing, just good), but be prepared to wait an hour or more!

A tale of 1.5 hour wait...

Everyone else has mentioned this, but I case you missed it...you either need to get here super early or be prepared to wait. The problem with Hirafu is that, most restaurants are so packed with reservations, walk ins are hard to come by. BUT Tonzaken does not take reservations, so it's all walk-ins and then grabbing a ticket and waiting for a table.

On the positive side, the ramen was decent, very affordable comparing to the rest of Hirafu, and hits the spot when it's nice and cold. We also had some chicken wings that was extremely tasty and juicy. We tried the curry chicken cutlet with rice (mediocre), Dosanko Ramen with salty broth (which turns out to actually be a semi briny kelp based broth), and a specialty made Asahikawa with miso base (there are pork slices, but under the slices of meat are sprouts, bamboo shoots, napa cabbage) with an egg (this is just a hard boiled egg, not soft boiled and no seasoning). All the ramen were tasty and the noodles were well cooked. In addition we had 1 coke and 1 small sake, all this for about ¥6,800!

The not so great part... The long wait...enough said. Also, because we waited for so long, we grabbed a stool for my friend to sit (he was not feeling well) but the host came out about 20 minutes to take the stool and said they needed it. Which is fine, we understand they need it for dining customers, but what I didn't understand was...he took the stool and stacked it away...they didn't need it!!! This is the main reason I am docking a star on service (would have given them a 4 star in the service category).