Today’s rainy weather made me look forward to tonight’s ramen dinner – Michelin starred bowl of ramen from Nakiryu at Otsuka.

If we didn’t search online, we wouldn’t have known that there were only 2 Michelin starred ramen in Tokyo – Tsuta ramen, and recently Nakiryu ramen for their tantanmen.

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It’s located at the ground floor of a building near Otsuka station. Unfortunately, we got lost again and spent maybe twenty minutes going around instead of what would have been only a ten minute walk.

If it’s good, people will be there, waiting in line. And there was a line. For about an hour under the rain, we were one of those people lining up outside the building. Their space has bar table that seats around ten people wrapped around an open kitchen.

Ramen vendo! The nickname I gave to this machine.

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Seafood shio

Packed with a variety of toppings from shrimp dumplings, pork slices, whole egg. The clear soup is very mild in flavor so you can enjoy each of them. The amount & variety of toppings is a good value for the price. If you prefer a hearty broth, go for tonkotsu base ramen.

Tantanmen

Simpler in terms of toppings, but this had the best broth / soup among all the ramen we had in our entire trip. It’s not all spice. It had some kind of a nutty flavor. If I were to choose one shop for a repeat visit, it would be Nakiryu for it’s Tantanmen.