There's never any excuse to go hungry in Tokyo, least of all if you're underground in Shibuya, beneath one of the busiest pedestrian crossings in the city. Food Show, the excellent basement food floor of the Tokyu Toyoko department store, lies right below the milling hordes in the Hachiko Square, and it can often feel just as crowded. But there's always good food to be had.
Besides the standard stalls selling vegetables, fish, groceries, obento and sozai (cooked dishes to take home for dinner), there are also a couple of good places serving light meals. And then there's the Test Kitchen, a small section with a counter seating six at a time, which is taken over by a succession of restaurants for one-week sessions — kind of like an organized pop-up. Right now it's an outfit from Hakodate called Higuruma, serving Hokkaido seafood bento take-outs...
...while the kitchen is serving up ramen under the name Zundou (from the Japanese term for the tall cylindrical metal cooking pots used in ramen shops for preparing the soup).
There's only one choice — a straightforward shio ramen, made with a chicken/ seafood stock — but it's good. The toppings include chashu, memma, half a shoyu-preserved egg (a bit rubbery on the outside), wakame, fu, and shavings of crunchy fried onion.
But what gave it a special lift was the optional extra side dish, a snack-sized donburi bowl topped with super-fresh ikura, uni or a combination of the two...
A great little afternoon snack.
The illustrated menu spells out the various options. And there's more on the Zundou web site here...
Although the main branch is in Hakodate, there's also a branch in Shinagawa. It doesn't score very highly on Ramen Database (the essential resource if you read Japanese), so it's probably not worth a detour.
