OJT EATS | Menya Itto
While it may not be able to compare to Japan, Taipei is a great place to be if you are looking for a good bowl of ramen and you can’t make it to Japan. One place that was founded in Tokyo has made it over to Taipei (along with quite a few other chains to be honest) is Menya Itto. One of the things that excited us about this place is that it is known for its tsukemen or dipping ramen of which we love so down we went to give it a try.
We started off with a small dish of beef tendon. This had clearly been stewed for a long time and literally melted in our mouths.
This was their scallop chicken white ramen. The broth itself was very rich and the slices of chicken were surprisingly pretty fully of flavour. The egg we ordered was sake flavoured which turned out to be an aquired taste. There seems to be more and more chicken broth ramen places and if just half of them taste as good as this, there won’t be any complaints from us!
One thing I do really like about ramen shops in Asia is that the most common side to a big bowl of noodles seems to be a smaller bowl of rice. This was the chicken char siu rice with lashings of mayo on it. At first, I thought it was a layer of cheese but no, just mayo!
Now this was the dish that we were most eagerly anticipating, the tsukemen. You can see the dipping broth on the right being much darker than the chicken ramen broth but the noodles and toppings were the same (although we switched up the egg for a normal non-sake one). This was a very impressive tsukemen. The broth was bursting with flavour, the noodles were bouncier for not having sat in broth and the toppings were as delicious as they were for the ramen. You can ask for the broth to be heated as it cools and also to add some clear stock to make it a warming soup at the end. It’s not quite up there with OJT’s favourite tsukemen place in Tokyo but it’s not a bad alternative considering.
Menya Itto has quickly climbed up to a pretty prominent spot of favourite ramen places in Taipei (although that list is very long). It’s definitely the spot we will pop to when craving tsukemen though!
Menya Itto, No. 29號, Section 1, Nanjing E Rd, Zhongshan District, Taipei City, Taiwan
Cheers, JL