Build Your Own Ramen

There are a lot of ramen places who specialize in certain types of ramen. My favorite place in Tsuchiura, Ryuusuke, specializes in chicken ramen even though they have different kinds of ramen on the menu. In Tsukuba, Aoi does an excellent pork tsukemen that everyone should try. I believe that is their main popular ramen but they do have others. Everyone in Japan walks into a ramen place and knows what to expect. Miso ramen place, you are getting miso ramen, shoyu ramen place, you are getting shoyu ramen. That is the usual formula. What if I told you there is a ramen place in Ibaraki where you build your own ramen? The soup is set but the toppings to the ramen are not. You choose the meat topping, the type of noodles, and what vegetables go in the ramen. Sounds crazy right? Well, Tsukuba has a place that takes this idea to the max and it is called Hito Tsubo Cha.

Hito Tsubo Cha

Hito Tsubo Cha is located in the Amakubo area of Tsukuba. It is near High Mount, the crazy maze soba place I wrote about not too long ago. Tsubo Cha is connected to a Asian supermarket that specializes in Chinese goods and produce.
The Ibaraki Eats Duo went to Tsubo Cha for a late dinner a few months ago. We parked our car in the parking area at the front of the restaurant/supermarket and walked inside. There is no separate entrance for the restaurant. You have to walk into the supermarket first to get to the restaurant.

The Supermarket

As I said before, you have to walk into the supermarket to get to Tsubo Cha. The entrance to Tsubo Cha is an opening by the automatic sliding doors of the supermarket. The supermarket is called Mansai Bussan (I think). I do recommend checking out the supermarket before or after your meal at Tsubo Cha. There are a lot of interesting Asian products and grocery items to check out. Some of I knew like shrimp chips, spicy chili pepper seasoning, and noodles. A lot of the other products, I had no clue what they were. Still it was a lot of fun roaming the aisles and playing detective with my wife trying to figure out what certain things were. After a few minutes of checking out the supermarket, we headed inside Tsubo Cha.

Inside

When you walk into Tsubo Cha you are greeted by a big open refrigerator area and a busy staff and restaurant full of customers. Most of those customers and staff were speaking Chinese I think. This seemed like a Chinese authentic experience. One of the things that shocked me was how many customers were at the restaurant at the time we visited. It was close to 21:00 when we got the the restaurant. In most cities in Ibaraki, that is closing time for a lot restaurants. But this seemed to be the dinner rush for Tsubo Cha. The other thing that shocked me was that the regular menu is not available at this time. You can only order ramen. The last and most shocking thing about this restaurant is that you do not just order your ramen, you build it.

The Menu

This restaurant does have a proper paper menu, but if you come to Tsubo Cha at the time we did, they only do ramen.
First off, when you enter the restaurant you are given a tray and directed to this open refrigerator looking place. There are tons of small containers in it that have an array of different meats, vegetables, and dumplings. This is what you are going to be putting into your ramen. There are regular toppings like negi, naruto, bamboo shoots, and more. But then there are other things I would never have thought of putting into my ramen, like boar meat, mochi, dumplings, fish mochi, sausage, gyoza, ham, mushrooms, and a lot more toppings I don't remember. You have to pick five of these toppings, put them on a tray, and take them to the kitchen. Afterwards, the chef will ask you what kind of noodles you want. I picked rice noodles and my wife picked regular curly ramen noodles.
We went back to our table and waited for our ramen.

Our Ramen Has Arrived!

The top ramen is mine. It has rice noodles, boar meat sausage, mushrooms, ham, and dumplings.
My wife's ramen has the curly regular ramen noodles, mushroom, dumplings, cooked tofu, fish mochi.
Before going into the weird toppings and ingredients we put in our ramen, there is one thing I have to say. The soup is incredible. It was a creamy, spicy, sort of miso-like soup ramen that blew my mind. I loved the soup so much that I drank the bowl clean after I finished all my toppings and noodles. My wife also agreed that the soup was fantastic.
Getting into my ramen first, the boar sausage was amazing and went very well with the soup. The dumplings were also awesome because they sucked up all the delicious flavor from the soup. When I bit into them, I got an explosion of meat and delicious ramen soup. The mushrooms were OK. As far as the noodles go, they were tasty but I doubt I will ever order them again. The reason being that it was damn near impossible to pick up the noodles with my chopsticks. They just kept sliding off no matter how much I tried to pick them up. It was like trying to nail jelly to a wall, it was impossible. In the end I just used a spoon and hoped that I got some noodles in there.
My wife made the smart choice of getting regular curly ramen noodles that she was able to pick up easily. She also had dumplings and fried tofu which also absorbed all that delicious soup from the ramen bowl. What really surprised me was the fish mochi that has orange stripes. I am not sure what it is called. If you do, please send me a DM on Instagram so I can edit this post. That mochi was fantastic. I am not sure what fish they use since it mostly tasted like the soup from the ramen, but it was chewy and tasty. My wife really enjoyed her ramen and said she would like to come back to Tsubo Cha when the full menu is available. There was a fried rice menu item that piqued her interest.

After we finished both are ramen, we thanked the staff and headed back to our car. Hito Tsubo Cha is an interesting and delicious ramen experience. I am not aware of many places that allow you to just grab as many toppings for your ramen as you like. Not only that, but some of those toppings are things you would never have thought of putting in ramen. For example, boar's meat sausage. It was quite an experience and I hope to go back soon.

So if you are around the Amakubo area of Tsukuba and are looking for a tasty and interesting ramen experience, why not give Hito Tsubo Cha a chance? Who knows? You might see us there. Having ramen that we helped create.
Enjoy!

For more information on Hito Tsubo Cha, check out their Tabe Log page:
https://tabelog.com/ibaraki/A0802/A080201/8025766/