Kinguemon

This post has been a long time in the making.  Kinguemon is one of the more famous chains of ramen shops in Osaka, and I had heard about it from a few different places.  One of my coworkers ate there a few weeks before, and raved about it.  I knew I wanted to go, but the stores were always a bit out of the way.  But then, the other day, I discovered there was a branch right on Dotonbori.  I'm not sure how I missed that before, but it doesn't matter.  All that matters is that it was easy to grab on my way home from work one day.

Kinguemon is known for their varieties of shoyu ramen.  There are three different kinds assigned by color: gold, red, and black, which have different blends of soy sauce in them.  But Kinguemon's original is the separate Osaka black and its mix-it-yourself seafood counterpart, Naniwa black.  I'm sure I'll visit another branch and try a different style (spoiler alert!), but this time I went with the classic Osaka black.

Information
金久右衛門
Ōsaka-fu, Ōsaka-shi, Chūō-ku, Dōtonbori, １丁目４−１７
Kinguemon is just off of Dotonbori, a block or two to the east of the Shinsaibashi shopping arcade.

The Bowl
This was a deep, roasty shoyu bowl, very much in the vein of Marujoe and Toyama Black.  It smelled fairly strongly of menma.  The menma in the bowl were some of the thickest I've ever hard, and actually kind of hard to chew.  The noodles were flat, but quite firm, and the chashu was just one big, tender slice.

Would I Go Again?
Yeah, I want to try the other varieties.  I'll choose another branch, though.

Should You Go?
Yeah.  It's right on Dotonbori, so it couldn't be more convenient.