鬼金棒 Lab（Kikanbo）「牛骨らー麺」

✔️Store name / Menu

Smack dab in the middle of Salaryman City is a unique can't-miss Bowly McBowlface.

Kikanbo features a devil theme and an appropriate ramen experience. It's all about the karashibi spices - both hot spicy and numbing spicy, all mixed up.

Yes. Numbing spice. For the uninitiated, there is a type of pepper, originally from China, that gives the mouth a cool, lightly numb sensation. It's also got an intoxicating, vaguely citrus floral scent. It is very much an acquired taste, and one that I have very much acquired.

The Japanese call it sansho. I call it awesome.

You can choose from four levels of each spice, plus an additional "oni" (devil) level for an 150 yen charge (separate for each spice, both hot and numbing).

I went with futsuu (regular) spicy and mashi (extra) numbing. For result refer to photos. You can really see the green numbing spice all over the place.

It can be hard to appreciate the broth with all that spice going on, to be honest. But the chashu... oh man, I've had Kikanbo before but I do not remember ever having chashu like this.

Sweet and salty and melty in your mouthy. Almost as good as rafute, an Okinawan pork specialty that miiiiiight be the best meat dish in the whole world. Someone once convinced me that rafute was made by first marinating the pork in coke. If that sounds gross, try rafute and tell me it doesn't somehow make sense, like if the tenderest pork was imbued with the deepest cola flavor. Or maybe Dr. Pepper. I think the point I'm trying to make is rafute should be classified as a dessert.

And Kikanbo's chashu is right up there.

This mix of spices and pork of both the tender and liquid varieties is highly addictive. Looking at these pictures of making me both sad and glad I don't live near Kanda or Ikebukuro, where Kikanbo can be found.