Shodai Men-ya Akutagawa — Restaurant in Kyoto

This is the small RAMEN restaurant near the DOSHISHA University. There are only 8 seats in this restaurant. First, you need to buy the tickets at the ticket machine. When you buy the tickets, you select the amount of noodle ,topping and side menu.

・Amount 並: normal, 中: slight huge, 大: huge

・Topping チャーシュー: slice roasted pork 味玉: soft boiled and marinated egg のり: 5 sheets toasted laver ほうれん草: spinach ネギ: Welsh onions キャベツ: cutted cabbage

・Side menu ごはん: rice 瓶ビール: bottled beer チャーシュー丼: a bowl of rice with slice roasted pork

Then you wait in line in front of that restaurant. When you go into the restaurant, you choose firmness of noodles (a little softer, normal, a little harder), the degree of taste (weak, normal or strong) and amount of oil (small, normal or huge).

If you want to season according to taste, you can use the seasoning on the table.

・seasoning ニンニク: garlic paste 豆板醤: broad bean chili paste お酢: vinegar

This is very good taste RAMEN! The restaurant is usually packed at lunch time, so you had better go here a...

Went during lunch (12pm) on Wednesday Oct 4 before visiting Kyoto Imperial Palace.

Great ramen! Possibly the best ramen I have so far in my life! Liked the soup so much!

It’s amazing how we could pick noodle firmness, broth richness and oil amount.

I don’t like oily food, so I picked the No oil option (or the least oil, I don’t know enough Japanese to know). And the broth turned out to be so tasty that I drank almost all of it.

The ramen I had in California was always too salty and oily for my liking.

I added spinach to my ramen and they were so generous with the spinach amount, I was delighted to have my veggies with the ramen.

It was my first time eating ramen in Japan, and I wasn’t familiar with the ramen ordering machine, but with the help of google translate I was able to order successfully! Glad that we decided to try out this ramen place!

Staffs were very friendly and helpful!

Line was long but it moved rather quickly. It’s near a university, so there was quite an amount of students grabbing lunch at this...

My first ramen experience in Kyoto couldn’t have been better. This place is very popular with students as it’s close the Doshisha University, so there’s always a queue no matter what time of the day. But, for good reason!

I went for the 中らーめん (medium size) and added 味玉 (boiled egg), ほうれん草 (spinach) and 白ネギ (sliced onion). Once you’ve selected your ramen and added toppings, when there’s room for you the worker will come out and ask how you’d like your broth and noodle texture (how oily you want it, how strong you want the taste, and how hard or soft you want the noodles). I went for “normal”.

Everything about this dish was perfect for me, the broth was not too oily or salty, the taste was fragrant and creamy, and all the of the other ingredients were cooked to perfect. The pork melted in the mouth, the egg was soft and creamy, this really was such a delicious dish, and unbelievably filling!

Highly recommended and I can’t wait to see what the rest of Kyoto has on offer, but this place will definitely be...