Noodle pull out of shio tonkotsu ramen at Santouka (Shibuya)

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1. [Ramen Santouka in Shibuya](https://youtu.be/gbbmPMclgPQ) (らーめん山頭火 渋谷店) is one of 15 stores of the famous Santouka ramen chain in Japan. Santouka serves a tonkotsu ramen, originally from the city of Asahikawa in Hokkaido. Asahikawa style tonkotsu is a relatively light style of tonkotsu ramen. Originally, Santouka only served shio ramen in their first store in Asahikawa. Now, there is much more variety available on their menu, with shio ramen still being the most popular and iconic item.

   Looking in detail at their shio ramen, it has a quite light and opaque soup, much less emulsified and rich than Hakata style tonkotsu ramen. The shio tare is also more on the mild side, not really pushing the soup into salty territory. So if regular ramen is usually too salty for you, then Santouka might be a place you could like.

   The chashu is quite soft and tender, basically melts away in your mouth. One immediately noticeable topping on this bowl is the small umeboshi, which provides a palate cleanser and sour refresher along the way.

   The noodles are quite interesting, very thin and wavy. They fit well to the mild soup by not standing out much by themselves.

   If you would like to see more of this shop and this bowl of ramen, check out this short video: https://youtu.be/gbbmPMclgPQ