Ramenkotan Abenoharukasu

We found this restaurant while staying at the Marriott Miyako hotel - located in the same skyscraper (the tallest building in Japan) as this small restaurant. Our concierge gave us a small brochure listing a description of all of the restaurants located in the building. there are approximately 6...0 small restaurants are clustered on the 12th through the 14th floor with escalators between them allowing easy movement within the array of restaurants between floors. It's a destination in itself because each of these floors consists solely of varied style restaurants - predominantly Japanese, of course, but also french, italian etc.. Each restaurant has a display window with idealized samples of each dish they serve so you can window shop. We selected this restaurant which was listed as #38 in the brochure (that number is also posted on the front of the actual restaurant - which was helpful because we don't speak Japanese and nearly all of the Restaurant name signs were in Japanese script). The menu was pictorial and they were happy to furnish an English version when we requested it. It is rare to find any staff in any of these restaurants who speak anything but a few phrases of English but you can order easily by simply pointing to the menu. The brochure description of this particular restaurant was "This ramen shop offers a special soup made from a mix of many flavor notes with noodles that are hand-kneaded by highly skilled cooks: this shop is loved by its many regular customers in Osaka for 45 years." That caught our eye and we searched for #38 and found it on floor 12f. We were seated in a tiny table for two, in a row of such tables. There was also seating at a counter. Although small the atmosphere was pleasant. We were seated next to two students who spoke a little English and they helped us with some of our questions on etiquette and which things to use and to use as accompaniments to the dishes served (think being served a big steak in the US and then dumping A-1 sauce onto your salad). Lots of mystifying bottles on the table and nothing in English. We were served our Ramen with a giant ladle in each bowl - it was used to lift the soup and pick up the noodles from the ladle with your chop sticks. A fun adventure in learning now to eat soup Japanese style (there were no western silverware offered or available). Seated immediately next to us were two young students and we kept glancing over to see how it should be done. they finally noticed and began offering us advice in English. The Ramen was the best we've ever tasted and we lived in Hawaii for 6 years where they have AMAZING ramen style soups and also Saimin - also a delicious noodle soup.. So if you are used to eating Ramen out of a cellophane package... you are in for a TREAT. They served a lightly fried rice side dish that had tiny shrimp, scallops etc in the mix and it too was delicious. Photos attached of our dishes. Worth a trip if you like Ramen, this is one of the finest we've ever tasted. Bottom line is I wish I could LIVE inside of this building and try every one of these restaurants at least once. We never were served a mediocre meal during our entire visit at any of these restaurants in the Abeno Harukas skyscraper (floors 12-14).

Visited May 2017