Kotteri Ramen Naritake - (Paris)

 Quoting from a local Japanese friend,  Hong Kong is the city with the most number of Ramen shops per capita outside of Japan,  even counting in the likes of Taiwan, New York or Singapore.   Ramen shops in Hong Kong might be quite decent on average but the true elite members are rarely to be discovered,  especially when there are so many unique styles of Ramens in Japan itself on a micro scale which are not exported or accepted outside of Japan knowhows.   Ok,  Japan also sees really average ramen qualities around every street corner as well,  but the real best of the best there are truly out of this world amazing and will have you swooning over with the attention to every smallest details.    One of the most startling things I heard about Naritake Ramen in Paris from Japanese expats working in Paris,  is that they said they don’t really enjoy the really thick  kotteri こってり  soup here despite this shop being a direct import from Chiba of Japan (Link:  なりたけ ).  On the other hand a certain complied list of the Top 100 restaurants in Paris included here as one of the best restaurants in Paris.   What this proves in the end is that food is always going to be a subjective matter…   but will you believe in my subjective review of this place ?

 

 

Naritake from Chiba, Japan -
They specialize in the kotteri thick soup ramen.
If you walk into here and then complain the soup is too thick,  I am not going to sympathize with you because it explains it clearly on the name sake and on the menu already. 
 

 

 

 

Their Menu -
In Japanese and also in French.  
No Engrish explanation was kind of surprising to me!

 

Soups and Preparations being done -
Looking good but you know I am only looking at the end result haha !

 

 

Shoyu and Tonkotsu “Pork Bones” based Ramen -
The soy sauce base didn’t look too dark but the soup was definitely very very salty even by normal ramen standards.   The aforementioned Kotteri thick pork bones soup was literally quite fatty with floating pieces of pork fat,  not a sight uncommon if you visit Kyushu of Japan but this does heed a warning if you don’t like fatty floating bits of pork fat in your ramen.  It’s forewarned by the menu description here.   I liked this ramen but it was really too salty compared to the norm I get in Japan for this style,  including Tokyo and Yakohama and less so in Kyushu region.   Bar the saltiness this was pretty good   ~  7/10

 

 

Their Ramen Noodles are made here locally in Paris -
I think the noodles were boiled too soft to my liking but once again that’s only my personal experience vs what I usually get in Japan,  not that I can choose over here either as your noodles will arrive as they think it the best.   But at the end of the day I think the ramen here was decent.   It is all relative to what you do have accessible at the time,   but yes,  this is to me just a notch or two below the best available on the market globally.  But not far off if they could fix the saltiness problem! 

 

 

Price:   Euro $13
Ease of Access:   4/5
Food:   ♕♕♕♕

Opening Hours:
Mon – Sat  -  11:30am to 15:00pm,  18:30pm to 22:00pm

Address:  31 Rue des Petits Champs, 75001 Paris, France ( aka Japanese street in Paris)
Ph:  +33 1 42 86 03 83