One last pilgrimage to this run-down shopping street in the western suburbs…
One last confrontation with this seen-better-days ticket machine…
And one last bowl of this remarkable, genre-busting, one-of-a-kind mazemen — the "Everything roasted garlic men"…
Yes, sad but true. It was the final weekend for the original Ivan Ramen, out in Rokakoen.
So a chashu-men was called for too…
Ivan himself was there. He flew in from New York to take care of the final two days of service at his iconic ramen counter.
It does indeed feel like the end of an era.
This is how I wrote up Ivan Ramen back in 2009 in my Japan Times column…
A lot has changed in the the Tokyo ramen field over the past six years. No longer a sign of desperation and stigma – "the last resort of failed salarymen before they kill themselves" was Ivan's pithy assessment of how it was when he entered the business – it is now an arena for experimentation, expertise and enthusiasm.
And ramen has finally been recognized as a cuisine in and of itself.
Ivan has had a lot to do with that. In fact it's not too much to say that Ivan Ramen has been a game-changer — and not only because it was the only ramenya where you could slurp to a soundtrack of the Grateful Dead…
Ivan last weekend from tokyo food file on Vimeo.
