This Hakata style ramen place is hands down better than Ichiran and better than Ippudo. Tanaka Shoten offers the creamiest and most authentic Hakata style tonkotsu ramen you will find anywhere in Tokyo. The only rivals to this tonkotsu ramen are far away on Kuyushu, in a part of Fukuoka city called Hakata. That’s a long trip to find a worthy tonkotsu competitor. But Ichiran and Ippudo are definitely beat!
Tanaka Shoten is a unique ramen store, found just outside of the center of Tokyo in a suburb called Adachi-ku, with the nearest station being called “Rokucho”. Rokucho is connected via the Tsukuba Express to main station like Akihabara and Kitasenju. Therefore it is less difficult to reach Tanaka Shoten in Rokucho as it first seems from a glance on Google Maps.
Tanaka Shoten fames itself with a broth made of pork bones and pork back fat, which is boiled up to 60 hours! I personally do not know any other store that boils their tonkotsu broth this long. Not even Ichiran or Ippudo can compete here in this case.
The result is an opaque, beautiful silky and smooth white brooth that is hard to compare to anything but fresh cream. Maybe fresh cream that was thickened with roux. I don’t know, this broth makes you run out of comparisons.
The noodles are typical thin noodles, well known in the Hakata style tonkotsu world. You can order them in 4 different levels of firmness, from very hard to soft. It is recommended to order them hard (“barikata”) in the beginning, as they will soften up over time in the hot soup. If you go with normal or even soft in the beginning, they would soak up the soup too fast and get mushy. But some people like that…
Once you are done with your noodles, but still hungry, you can order a refill called “kaedama”. For this, you simply yell at one of the employees “Sumimasen! Kaedama!” after which they will ask you for the desired hardness of the noodles. For the refill, it makes sense to go for normal hardness or even soft.
You will also find some slices of buttery soft and delicious chashu on top of your tonkotsu ramen, which is made of pork belly that has been marinated and boiled. You will also find an ajizuke tamago, an egg that has been marinated and boiled up to a point, where the inside is still creamy-soft.
Overall, it can be said that this is bar far the best Hakata ramen in Tokyo and everyone who says otherwise has to fight me in real life. There is no better tonkotsu in Tokyo than Tanaka Shoten. People from all over Tokyo come to this place to save themselves the trip to Hakata. If they can do it and do so quite often, what holds you back?
You can find Tanaka Shoten here on Google Maps:
To find more stores of the Tanaka family franchise, go to their website:
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AloJapan.com