When it comes to ramen, there are many tastes and regional variations whether it be shio (salt), shoyu (soy sauce), tonkotsu (pork bone broth) in Kyushu or miso ramen  which is served up in Hokkaido. On top of that come the crazy novelty ones which include things like cheese, coffee, ice-cream, tequila, kiwi, ham, pizza, sake, pineapple and so on. The kind of things that the true ramen masters would most definitely turn their nose up at!

A few days after it’s December 8th release I cycled on down to this restaurant in Otemachi but didn’t realise the rainbow ramen was only available from 2pm. I had arrived at the opening time of 11 am but didn’t want to wait around for three hours so gave up then! Instead I rode home and, as a substitute, made the Sonic the Hedgehog curry which supposedly turns your poo blue!

A few days later, James suggested a meet-up for the train curry restaurant trio and I saw another opportunity to try and sample this incredibly unique ramen…and to my surprise both him and George were actually game! The dish is restricted to the first 30 customers so we wanted to make sure we would get it. As a result, we met up just after 1pm on Christmas Eve Eve (or December 23rd if you prefer!). I kept an eye on the outside of Dosanko (1-6-1 Ōtemachi, Chiyoda-ku) from the nearby Starbucks but the queue we anticipated just never came. In fact, I don’t think we saw any other customer order it during our time at the restaurant!

At 1:58 pm we wandered over but was still made to wait till 2pm to go in and order the rainbow ramen. After some indecision outside, George finally opted to also get the same as me whilst James was boring played safe and just got regular ramen. Admittedly, ¥1,280 (£9.12/$12.37) is too much for ramen in my book but as a one-off special it’s not a problem. Besides, it’s not that much more expensive than some popular chains like Ichiran and Ippudo.

The seven colours of the rainbow are made with coloured cheese fondue sauce and then carefully placed on individual slices of the chashu (braised pork belly) meat in order to keep it all in place and let the Instagram generation (plus bloggers!) get their photos!

It was time to finally dig in and enjoy the ramen which uses a miso broth as it’s base. I knew that beforehand but really wasn’t expecting a curry taste akin to the miso milk curry ramen I had up in Aomori a couple of years ago. As it is though, Dosanko’s home prefecture Hokkaido is just north of there.

The chashu meat was overly generous and very filling, and trying to get hold of the noodles was quite difficult with all those colourful layers on top but when I did eventually manage to fish some out they were thick and deliciously chewy. The creamy cheese and curry combo worked really well.

As you’d probably expect, the dish was a shadow of it’s glorious self within a few minutes of tucking into it as the colours seeped into the broth.

Beforehand, I thought this dish would be all style with no substance and a high price but I was happy to be proved wrong. It was a very hearty and fulfilling bowl of ramen which did do the job of putting a smile on my face!

Click here to read ‘A Super Sonic Blue Curry Which Makes Your Poo Change Colour…Or Does It?’

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