Piping Hot Tsukemen

I am a huge fan of tsukemen. Don't get me wrong, I love ramen. I lost count of how many times I have talked about ramen on this blog and to my friends, but I love tsukemen. It is fun dipping noodles into some delicious soup. The problem with tsukemen is after a while, the soup gets cold and everything else gets cold. It is not a deal breaker for me, but I do wish sometimes the soup stayed at least lukewarm. The place I am going to talk about today heard my thoughts and the thoughts of many other tsukemen-loving customers and decided to do something about it. What if the soup never got cold? What if, after the last slurp of noodles, you can drink some nice hot ramen soup? Ishiyaki Ramen Bushi declared that no soup shall go cold in this restaurant!

Ishiyaki Ramen Bushi

Ishiyaki Ramen Bushi, or Stone Grilled Ramen Bushi, is located in Katsutaizumicho area of Hitachinaka City. It is only a one-minute walk from Katsuta Station and very easy to get to. From Katsuta station, walk from the Koban (police box) and go to the small roundabout by all the pay-to-park parking areas. Bushi will be on the left side of the roundabout next to an izakaya.
By the way, if you decide to have a few drinks before or after your piping hot tsukuemen. At the roundabout is one of my favorite bars called Good Joker. The owner makes some amazing cocktails and has a huge collection of vinyl records on the wall. The bar always has good music playing.
Anyway, back to Bushi. The Ibaraki Eats Duo visited Bushi one Wednesday evening after a long work day. We parked our car and headed inside.

Inside

When we opened the sliding door into Bushi, we were greeted by a small ticket vending machine and a narrow aisle to walk through. Bushi does not have any table seating. Everything is counter seating. You can take the counter seats by the kitchen and watch the tsukemen chef work, or take a counter seat by the opposite wall.
My wife and I sat on the wall side and headed back to the ticket vending machine to order our tsukemen.

The Menu

Sorry, my non-Japanese-speaking readers, the menu is only in Japanese. No English in sight.
The menu has tsukemen and ramen so this place isn't a tsukemen place only.
From the top left there is the Ishiyaki Noukou Gyokai (thick fish base) Tsukemen , Ishiyaki Curry Tsukemen, Ishiyaki Mapo Tsukemen. Next to that is cheese and rice seconds, which is for after you finish your noodles. After that is the regular tsukemen and ramen. There is the konbu tsukemen, meat stamina ramen, Iekei ramen, white miso ramen, iwanori mizore ramen, chashu men, oninibushi mazesoba, nira soba (chive ramen, a lot of chives), and finally temomi shoyu ramen.

After checking out the menu, we got our tickets from the vending machine and waited for our tsukemen.

Ishiyaki Noukou Gyokai Tsukemen

This was my order: the thick fish base soup tsukemen. When my tsukemen came to our counter, the soup was still boiling. The bowl it came in was a cool-looking stone bowl, which explains why the soup was still boiling when it came to us. I was given a good amount of noodles, two slices of chashu, bamboo shoots, negi, and a nice slice of seaweed.
I grabbed some noodles and dipped them into my boiling soup. I then lifted the noodles and started slurping. This was a thick soup, but it wasn't as fishy as I thought it would be. In fact, there wasn't a taste of fish at all. It just tasted like a creamy, thick, light miso ramen soup. It wasn't bad, but it was different than what I thought I was going to get. My wife tried my tsukemen and she thought the same thing. Again, it wasn't bad, it was quite good, but not what was advertised. There were two pleasant things about my tsukemen. One was that the soup stayed nice and warm throughout my whole meal. Secondly, I looked at the size of my tsukemen and didn't think I would be full by the end of it. After I finished my tsukemen, the thick soup got me to a nice level of fullness that didn't make me want to lie down in the restaurant. All and all, not a bad tsukemen.

Ishiyaki Mapo Tsukemen

This was Mrs. Ibaraki Eats' order, and it looked amazing. My wife is a huge fan of mapo tofu, so I wasn't surprised when she ordered this. Just like my tsukemen, her stone bowl soup came to our counter piping hot but not boiling like mine. I think the reason for that is that her soup had more oil than mine which brought down the boiling level, if that makes sense. Her tsukemen came with noodles, chili powder, bamboo shoots, and seaweed. No chashu, but a lot of pieces of tofu in her soup.
My wife dipped her noodles and then got to slurping. She gave me a thumbs up and then started coughing. That would be the chili powder and all the spiciness from her soup. She let me have a try of her tsukemen, and after slurping some noodles, I also started coughing. This was one spicy tsukemen. Saying that, comparing my tsukemen to my wife's, her tsukemen was way better. It was very spicy, but it had a lot of flavor to it. The tofu also went well with the chili powder noodles. It was a great bowl of tsukemen. I would not mind ordering this tsukemen again.

After we finished our tsukemen and drank some of our warm soup, we thanked the staff and headed back home. Bushi, thank you for the amazing tsukemen. I love the idea of keeping the soup part of the tsukemen warm throughout the entire tsukemen slurping experience. My wife and I are definitely coming back soon.

So if you are around Katsuta Station in Hitachinaka City and are looking for some tasty tsukemen, why not give Ishiyaki Ramen Bushi a chance? Who knows? You might see us there. My wife enjoying the mapo tsukemen while I try the curry tsukemen.
Enjoy!

For more information on Ishiyaki Ramen Bushi, check out their Instagram page:
https://www.instagram.com/bushi.ishiyakiramen?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr