Kohoku-Ku Ramen

🍜4 / 5ramen rating

Service: 5

Atmosphere: 5

Spend: $20–30

“Kohoko-ku Ramen is named after one of the wards of Yokohama, and having lived in a neighboring ward of Yokohama for three years, I was expecting to find some Yokohama specific things here(like some Iekei ramen?), but instead it is more a celebration of general Japanese ramen culture, with lots of old signage and even some beer crate stools. Their signature is pork broth tonkotsu, so I went with that in their offering of Kumamoto Ramen, which differed from the regular Tonkotsu with the addition of black garlic oil. Their signature broth did not say Kumamoto to me - actually more like a balanced tonkotsu shoyu that felt closer to Iekei than Kumamoto to me. But why get hung up on names, the soup was good though a little on the tepid side. The oodles were standard firm thin straight that were indeed in the style of Kumamoto. The toppings included two pieces of thicker cut chashu, a nice jammy egg, one piece of baby bok choy and an oddly shaped shishito pepper. Suddenly all of the “shishito” peppers in town are wide like mini bell peppers. What the heck is going on? Washed it down with a Kirin, as they had a huge factory a train stop away when I lived in Yokohama so it was the beer of choice locally. Fun tiny spot - not exactly destination ramen but pretty darn good.”