Ramen-ya Shima (らぁ麺や 嶋): 2020 Ramen Shop of the Year; Nishi Shinjuku Go-chome, Tokyo

If you ask any ramen head what they thought was the most hyped ramen shop of 2020, I would say a majority will tell you it was Ramen-ya Shima located in West Shinjuku. Before Shima even opened their doors, the hype was building as the master apprenticed and worked at the famous Shina Soba-ya for years before laying the foundation for his own Central Tokyo shop. In fact, the queues for Shima got so massive that they had to implement a sign up sheet which is left outside every morning for prospective customers to choose which time slot to fill for that day. I believe the sign up sheet is posted outside at 9 am and when I arrived at 10, there were only a handful of seats still remaining. Shop is open for service from 11:00 to 16:00, but is closed every Wednesday and Saturdays. Again, be sure to arrive well before 11 if you would like to secure your spot for the day on the sign up board.

So I arrived at a little before 10 am and the earliest slot I could sign up for was at 14:30 so I nabbed it before killing time in the area. If you want an earlier slot, I definitely recommend coming by at least 9 am. You will have to kill time until your time slot, but hopefully you won’t have to kill 4+ hours like I did. Forgot to snap a photo of the ticket machine, my apologies, but probably wouldn’t help anyways since Shima seems to change the menu up depending on what ingredients they could get that week and also depending on the time of day you sit down as things tend to sell out quickly. My order was their make shift tokusei Shoyu Ramen. I say makeshift as they ran out of some of the pork chashu slices so I believe I’m missing a slice or two of what is typically presented in their regular Tokusei Ramen.

So pictured is their supremely popular Shoyu Ramen. To be honest all of their ramen varieties from the Shoyu to the Shio as well as their Tsukemen are incredibly popular so if you’re having a problem deciding, I would recommend grabbing whatever of the 3 you enjoy most. I was tempted to get the Tsukemen, but I prefer to grab a regular bowl of Shoyu if it’s my first time at a shop so I’ll have to revisit soon. I saw that their pork chashu over rice bowl was still available so I grabbed that as well.

Starting with the soup, it’s pretty obvious why Shima was getting so much praise as this is likely one of the best bowls of these New Wave refined chicken shoyu ramen I had this year. What I consider New Wave refined chicken ramen is a soup which utilizes primarily a chicken base using one of the high end brand chicken varieties to create a light stock with little to no emulsification. It can sometimes be supplemented with gyokai, seafood elements, but the core is chicken and it typically creates this very clean, almost transparent sheen. While very light on the touch, it is jam packed full of simple, delicious chicken flavor. Here at Shima, they use the Sansui Dori chicken and supplement it with a variety of dried fish, Gyokai elements to really up the umami level. For this bowl, coupled with the stock is the Shoyu tare which is made using a variety of hand selected craft soy sauces chosen specifically to pair with this broth. The shoyu tare gives it a dark vibrant color and has the flavor profile you’d expect from this hue; a bit of nuttiness and some smokiness which uplifts the chicken and gives multiple layers of flavor to the soup. Topping it off is the Chiyu chicken oil which glean on the surface and coats your tongue with every sip. The oil gives the soup some fattiness which the stock on it’s own lacks and provides an extra punch to an already impactful bowl. Really well balanced soup and definitely one that makes you appreciate the hours spent carefully crafting each component of this soup.

Noodles have a lot of the Shina Soba-ya DNA as it is sourced directly from them. While not the first, Shina Soba-ya was one of the pioneers in house made noodles at a time when most shops sourced them from a noodle maker. Using their decades of experience, a specific noodle recipe was prepared precisely to pair with this incredibly soup. The long, snappy strands have a fantastic wheat flour aroma which permeates with every bite and a refreshing slurpability with its soup cling and slipper exterior texture. Along with my make shift tokusei was two different pork chashu. One was what seemed like a shoulder cut and other was a fattier loin. Wasn’t completely sure, but they were both phenomenal adding different flavor complexities to the soup. First was a much fattier cut with a lot of aroma from the char which they add right before plating. Second had the long marinated braise flavor profile adding a lot more rich, sweetness to the bowl. I was also presented with both a pork and shrimp wonton which were both plump and juicy in their own right. I thought the shrimp was a bit better as it had some texture variety that I quite enjoyed. A few strands of crunchy menma bamboo shoots and a jammy soft boiled egg also came along with this Tokusei version. To top it off was a nice mound of Kujo negi, a brand variety of green onions popular in Kyoto, which gave it a crisp, refreshing palette cleanse in between slurps.

Mid way through my ramen I took some bites of my chashu over rice bowl which was honestly fire. I was pretty hungry given I was expecting to line up at 10 and eat sometime before 11 only to see I had to sign up and come back at 14:30 so this chashu-don was the perfect supplement to my ramen. The crispy charred bits on the exterior encapsulated a phenomenal, tender pork belly which melted in between my chopsticks. Intensity of the marinade on the pork made for the perfect white rice accoutrement and really finished my meal off nicely.

All in all, really solid shop. I definitely get the hype over this shop and I am determined to come back when my schedule allows to try their Tsukemen offering. I will say though, as much as I appreciate the sign up sheet which eliminates a lot of the wait, it does force you to be in the area, or at least a short train ride away in order to make it back for your appointment time. If you have a full day ahead of you exploring the different parts of Tokyo, I would may be skip it for a more accessible option. With that said, if you do end up making a visit, you will definitely be glad you did as it was a phenomenal meal.