French Ramen!?

Here is another ramen post for you my fellow Ibarakians! Last week, I discussed a delicious maze soba from a special chain restaurant in Tochigi. This week's ramen post is an original from Ibaraki. It is also an original style ramen. Miso ramen? Shoyu ramen? No, this is not a Japanese-style ramen I will be talking about today. It is a French-style ramen. This ramen can only be found in one place, and that is Ryugaski's own Matoya.

French Ramen Matoya

French Ramen Matoya is located in the old town area of Ryugasaki. It is on Route 5 passed the McDonalds and the Hiro supermarket.
Side note, there is a small vegetable and fruit market in front of the Hiro supermarket. Before you go to Matoya, you might want to check out some of the produce there. We were able to buy 2kg worth of onions for very cheap.
Anyway, while driving to Matoya be on the lookout for a cool-looking wooden house. Matoya is not your typical ramen restaurant setup. It is a French place but from the outside, it looks a a cowboy-style Western restaurant. If you decide to drive there, there are only three small spaces in front of the restaurant. There is another parking lot nearby but I am not sure where it is. Please ask the restaurant staff. During the last holiday of February, the Ibaraki Eats Duo headed to Matoya to try their famous French-style ramen. We were lucky enough to get a parking spot in front of the restaurant and headed inside.

The Menu

Before heading inside of Matoya, you are greeted by a sign by the door which is the menu. Sorry, my non-speaking Japanese friends, the menu is only in Japanese.
The most famous ramen at Matoya and the top ramen on the menu is the French Tomato Ramen. Under that is the Chicken Soup Ramen that is supposedly good for your skin (I am not sure how accurate this is), and next to that is the Special Confit (special French cooking style) Chashu Soba. Under those two ramen is the Truffle Smelling Thick Tsukemen, and next to that is the Thick Shoyu Ramen. Under that is the side menu and drink menu.
My wife and I checked out the menu and decided on what we wanted. We bought our ramen tickets at the vending machine and sat down.

Inside

I was pleasantly surprised by the inside of Matoya. It did not remind me of a regular ramen establishment like many other ramen places I have been to. It is nice to be surprised from time to time. Matoya has this atmosphere of being an old log cabin. There are a few tables around the restaurant and one counter area. There is also some random stuff around Matoya like the plastic shark you see in the photo. I have no idea why it is there, but I named him "Hank."
My wife and I sat at the counter area which could only seat up to four people max. We got comfortable on our stools and waited.

Chicken Salt Tsukemen

This was my ramen and I should mention that it was not on the main menu. The ticket vending machine does have some different menu items that are not on the menu that is printed outside of the restaurant. I chose the chicken salt tsukemen.
When my tsukemen came to my counter, it looked quite appetizing. It also looked way different than any other tsukemen I have ever had. It brought two small slices of French baguette bread. The waitress told us to dip our baguette into the soup. How was this tsukemen? It was...fine. Nothing too bad about this tsukemen except that it was a little too salty, but otherwise everything in this tsukemen was fine. The noodles were nice and the long piece of bamboo shoot was good too. It was fine.

French Tomato Ramen

This is the number one ramen at Matoya and it was Mrs. Ibaraki Eats' order. The ramen had spinach, fried onions, thin noodles, and other vegetables in it. I know the picture shows a white cream in the ramen but that is something you can add into or not. My wife was given a small cup full of white cream and the waitress recommended we add it to the ramen. She was also given a cup full of small grounded and cut-up chili pepper sauce in case we wanted to spice up our ramen.
My wife grabbed some noodles and started slurping. She gave it the thumbs up and let me try it next. When I slurped up my first noodles, the thought that immediately came to my mind was "French Onion Soup." This ramen tasted like an upgraded version of French onion soup minus the cheese. I do not mean that in a bad way. I thought the ramen was fantastic. The creamy white sauce mixed with the tomato and noodles gave the ramen this delightful taste of having a French fancy dinner. We also tried the chili sauce and it was quite spicy. Spicer than I was expecting from a place in Japan. This French Tomato Ramen was excellent and I would love to have it again the next time I am in Ryugasaki.

Sea Urchin Cream Kaedama

The final part of our French ramen adventure was an extra helping of noodles. The extra helping or kaedama, brought sea urchin, cream, and a long strip of chicken.
This kaedama was pretty good. I loved how creamy it was and the chicken was quite delicious. I think there could have been more sea urchins, but other than that this was a nice little ending to our ramen adventure. I would not mind having this creamy kaedama again.

My wife and I had an excellent time at Matoya. We enjoyed the atmosphere of the place, loved the French Tomato Ramen, and thought that the kaedama was great.
I do have one issue that I have to address. My wife and I got to Matoya at exactly 11:00 am, when it opened. My wife told me that Matoya also made Genovese gyoza which I was really excited to try. There was also another beautiful-looking tsukemen on the vending machine menu that was a limited supply but I thought being there early enough we would be able to order it. Unfortunately, when we walked up to the ticket vending machine, about 60% of the menu was unavailable. No gyoza of any kind, no special tsukemen, and a lot of the side menu item buttons had a red light on them which indicated we could not order them. This was disappointing and surprising since we were one of the first customers of that day. I am not sure if they had a supply issue that day or something but I hope the next time we go to Matoya, more of the menu will be available.

Other than that unfortunate part of our ramen adventure, and my OK tsukemen, I liked everything else about our trip to Matoya and would like to visit again. It is an interesting idea to make a French-style ramen and I think everyone should give it a chance.

So if you are ever around Ryugasaki and are looking for a different and interesting ramen to have for lunch, why not give French Ramen Matoya a chance? Who knows, you might see us there, hopefully trying the gyoza and enjoying the French Tomato Ramen.
Enjoy!

For more information on French Ramen Matoya, check out their X page:
https://x.com/ryugasakimatoya?mx=2