New Michelin Star Ramen In Tokyo! [Ginza Hachigo]

What's going on everybody? Frank from 5AM Ramen here and I am in Tokyo's glitzy Ginza neighborhood and I'm eating at a ramen restaurant that is arguably going to be the first place to get a Michelin star outside of the ones that already have a Michelin star. This is high level French cuisine inspired ramen. This place has become so popular that you actually need to visit before they open to be assigned a time to go back and visit later. I'm super excited. They've been getting so much hype. Let's see what they're all about. For those new here, welcome to 5AM Ramen, your top resource for all things ramen in Japan. The ramen world is a deep one. Join me, a Tokyo native, in discovering just how deep Japan's ramen world is. Today we're not visiting just any ramen restaurant. This ramen restaurant is Ginza Hachigo, which was just recently awarded a brand new Michelin star as part of the 2022 grouping. Tokyo still reigns supreme as a city with more Michelin star restaurants than any other city. But I personally am not about fancy full course dinners. I'm about ramen. In terms of ramen, Ginza Hachigo joins two other Tokyo ramen restaurants with a shiny Michelin star. So this exclusive club now has three members. Here's a little Michelin ramen background info. While they don't have a star anymore, we have to pay our respects to Tsuta, the first Tokyo ramen restaurant to get a Michelin star. A few years ago, they moved to a bigger space where they are today. This is in Yoyogi Uehara, which is an upscale neighborhood of Tokyo with a lot of high end bakeries of all things. Their flagship ramen is shoyu or soy sauce based. They merge three different soups together with the ingredients, everything from chicken to asari clams to dried fish. To playfully change the flavors of the soup, there's truffle oil, fig porcini mushroom cream and balsamic vinegar. Oh, and Tsuta officially has a premium instant ramen. It even includes the truffle oil. If you want to try this at home, go to Instant Ramen Japan and use the promo code Tsuta at checkout. We'll make sure that one of your five premium instant ramen is the one from Tsuta while they're still selling it. More info in the description below. Note that default shipping to the US and Australia is surface mail, but air mail is also available at checkout for an additional fee. Now on to the two ramen restaurants that have a star. These are the two that Ginza Hachigo joins. Soba House Konjiki Hototogisu does a delicious shio or salt seasoned ramen using Mongolian rock salt and Okinawan sea salt to hold up a soup that's mainly hamaguri clams and sea bream. Like at Tsuta, you have tiny pools of flavor changers at the top. Soba House is close to Tokyo's busy Shinjuku station. Also boasting a Michelin star is Sousaku Menkobo Nakiryu. Their most popular dish is a tantanmen, a spicy ramen derived from Chinese dan dan noodles. Ryu chili oil and sesame paste float at the very top. The broth is slightly sour from black and apple vinegar. The rest of the broth is a number of things, including whole chickens, oysters, and beef bones. Nakiryu is closest to Tokyo's Otsuka station. So Soba House and Nakiryu are the two currently with a Michelin star and Ginza Hachigo makes it a Michelin star ramen triangle. Okay, so I'm on my way to Ginza Hachigo now and it's about 8.50am, expecting a few people to be waiting in line. They start taking reservations from 9am, so I figured I'd be a little bit early. Let's see what it looks like. And this is what it looks like when I arrive. The umbrellas make it look like there's an army of people, but it really isn't that bad. For lunch, which is what we're doing, this reservation line is open from 9am. For dinner, you can start lining up at 4pm. So after waiting in this line, you'll eventually get to the front of Ginza Hachigo and you'll be faced with a piece of paper that looks like this. More on this now. Super simple system, you basically write your name down on the paper and since I was visiting this place with someone else, I put a little arrow below my name to indicate that I'm taking up two slots. You see the time slots in front of you? You choose one. I chose 11.10. At your scheduled time, you'll purchase your ramen tickets via the ticket machine and after being guided to your seat by the staff, you basically wait for your ramen. Let's talk about the ramen for a second and what makes it special. The owner at Ginza Hachigo, Matsumura-san, actually has a background in French cuisine. He, therefore, wanted to do something different and that he did. Their signature ramen is close to a shio or salt-seasoned ramen, but not quite. He uses ham prosciutto with sea salt from France to season the bowl. The soup itself is duck bones, whole chickens, scallops, dried tomatoes, dried shiitake mushrooms, and kelp. It all comes together harmoniously. The toppings are equally stunning. Kyoto kujo negi, or spring onions, bamboo shoots, and fatty chashu pork with pepper caviar. Lastly, the noodles are blended with durum wheat flour, which is normally used for pasta noodles. Now let's go to me on the ground with my full recap after eating this beautiful ramen. Oh man, that was really good, as you would expect. Before I get to the ramen itself, I just want to mention that they have a really good system going. After arriving at about 11, actually we were seated just at 11.10 if not a little bit earlier, you go in, you buy your tickets, and after you're seated, you're given the ramen basically immediately. They know you're coming. So all in all, I was out of there by 11.20. Even though there was this very relaxing music, relaxing environment, I still in my head was like, okay, this is ramen, I'm going to eat it quickly. I finished up after taking photos and videos, finished up everything within 10 minutes. Now the ramen itself was delicious. This is a flavor that you don't get in ramen. You do get salty undertones there, and that's all holding up a chicken and primarily duck-based soup. But it's so complex. It has these flavors that I don't normally get in shio or salt-seasoned ramen. It definitely has Japanese elements in the soup there, like the kelp, but I think with some of the non-Japanese elements, like dried tomato, it just tastes something that's a little bit unfamiliar, but in such a good and bold way. You know, the bowl itself is, of course, gorgeous to look at. It's very Ginza in that sense. I would say that among toppings, definitely the chashu pork stood out the most. Those were so delicious. Quite fatty, too. The green negi were good quality, as were the bamboo shoots or memma. But those chashu pork, oh my god. And if you order with all toppings like I did, you actually get two of them. Noodles were excellent, of course. Nice firm bite to them. Noodles that you would expect out of a high-level ramen restaurant. But the highlights for me were definitely that complex, deeply flavored soup along with the chashu pork. But the owner does a very good job of hovering between Japanese cuisine flavors as well as French cuisine flavors. And it's a harmonious meeting in the middle. I can understand the hype around this place. And even though it is a little bit of a commitment, again, the system is so easy. You just go a little bit earlier, same thing for dinner, go a little bit earlier before they open, and they'll tell you when to come back. Another place to add to an already impressive amount of wonderful ramen shops here in Ginza. What I'm about to say was in line with what everyone was thinking at the time. This was before the big announcement. And even though they didn't get a Michelin star this year, I won't be surprised in the future if they do get one. So in summary, this was high-level French cuisine-inspired ramen at a very high level of execution. Feel free to tune in to the next video. We'll be diving into another fancy Ginza ramen restaurant that does skemen, or dipping ramen. White truffle oil, mousse the works. This is perhaps fitting for Ginza and as luxurious as ramen can get. Now if you enjoyed this video, please hit that like button and also subscribe. Frank from 5M Ramen signing out and hope to see you in the next ramen video. Thanks for watching.