Tokyo restaurant serves up unusual ramen with blue chicken broth

It turns out that blue ramen tastes surprisingly delicious!

With so many ramen restaurants in the Japan’s capital, including a couple of Michelin–starred ones, noodle establishments have been looking for ways to stand out from the crowd with unique dishes featuring unusual ingredients like sea urchin, white chocolate and strawberry sauce, and even bear.

The latest ramen restaurant to grab everyone’s attention is Kipposhi, located less than ten minutes away on foot from the Tokyo Sky Tree, which is making news for serving up a visually stunning meal.

On the menu here is the “Clear Chicken Soup ‘Blue'”, which is priced at a reasonable 900 yen (US$7.86). According to the restaurant, the broth is made using a special Chinese cooking technique that clears away all the scum from the liquid, creating an incredibly clear soup that’s dense with flavour. Curiously, despite the explanation of the broth and the way it’s made, there’s no information explaining how it gets its colour.

Still, our Japanese-language reporter had made his way to the restaurant specifically for this meal, so he made no hesitation when ordering. After about five minutes, the beautiful dish arrived at the table.

Topped with some fresh greens, a salted egg, and slices of special roasted chicken fillet in place of the usual pork chashu fillets, there was no mistaking that the highlight of the dish was its bright green-blue colour.

The colour had even soaked into the noodles, giving them an eerie tinge that made them look like they were part of a crazy science project. Despite their unusual appearance, though, the taste was surprisingly delicious! The soup was packed with hearty chicken flavour, and the noodles had a fantastic, chewy texture that went well with the salted egg and chicken pieces. Although it looked blue, there was no unusual taste of colouring or additives here at all!

According to our taste-tester, the dish is so well-made that it’s the best tasting blue food he’s ever eaten, and even better than the Lina Blue Ramen he ate more than four years ago. Come to think of it, Pycocyanin, the chemical extracted from spirulina algae, which was the ingredient that gave Lina Blue Ramen its unusual colour, might very well be the secret ingredient that makes this ramen blue as well. Touted for its anti-aging effects, that would mean the dish is delicious and good for your health too!

Restaurant information
Kipposhi / 吉法師
Address: Tokyo-to, Sumida-ku, Azumabashi 3-1-17  Azumabashi Home 101
東京都墨田区吾妻橋3-1-17 吾妻橋ハイム 101
Hours: 11:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. / 5:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Closed Wednesdays

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