Rokudaime Keisuke's Ramen

There is no shortage of places to eat in the Ueno area, but what specifically attracted me to enter this ramen shop was a visually appealing, mouthwatering photo of noodles as thick as fettucine, an unusual shape for ramen or tsukemen, topped with generous tasty-looking slices of meat. Most ramen I've had come with a very thin slice or two of chashuu (tender, simmered/braised pork), but Rokudaime Keisuke's standard tsukemen and ramen come with several meat slices. Rokudaime Keisuke aims to blow away customers with the volume of meat sitting on top of the noodles. And if you're extremely hungry, you can order twice or even thrice the regular serving.

I ordered the spicy version of the standard tsukemen. The meat has been stir-fried in a tasty gingery sauce and is delicious by itself. It is possible to simply stir up the meat and noodles and to eat it as is without even bothering with the dipping sauce. The fettucine thickness of the noodles holds the residual sauce from the stir-fried pork well. But if you do use the dipping sauce, you will find that it is unlike any other tsukemen sauces, most of which are thick and made with a combination of pork broth and bonito. Rokudaime Keisuke's dipping sauce is thin and vinegary, pleasantly complementing the pork and noodles. Sometimes a fatty pork dish can leave you with a feeling called umay (a Tagalog word with no English translation -- umay means that feeling of being 'fed-up' with the taste of something and of wanting to break the sameness of taste). Not with this tsukemen and its savory vinegary dipping sauce. Umay doesn't exist here.

For a warmer bowl of ramen, soup ramen is also on the menu but the noodles are your standard round ramen noodles, still topped with generous slices of meat.

This restaurant is called Rokudaime or 6th generation because there are other Keisuke ramen restaurants specializing in other types of ramen such as shrimp based broth ramen, duck based broth, peanut-based broth ramen, and chicken broth based ramen.