How to book Iida Shouten

Iida Shouten (飯田商店, also written Iida Shoten) is a ramen shop in Yugawara, a hot-spring town in Kanagawa. It opened in March 2010³, and its chef, Shota Iida, took his inspiration from the late Minoru Sano's shop Shinasobaya². A 2016 feature described it as often called the best ramen shop in the prefecture³.

The menu is short: soy sauce ramen, salt ramen and dipping noodles (tsukemen), with toppings such as a pair of wontons, one of pork and one of Sansui jidori chicken¹. Tokyo Ramen of the Year (TRY) says nothing on the menu uses chemical seasoning². The 2016 feature listed a soy sauce tare blended from six raw soy sauces, a chicken broth made from Hinai jidori, Nagoya cochin and Sansui jidori birds, and noodles made in house each day from Hokkaido, Fukuoka and Kagawa wheat³.

The room has 15 seats¹, which TRY lists as nine counter seats and two tables for four². After a 2016 refurbishment, a long L-shaped wooden counter looks over a large kitchen³. Every seat is booked in advance online through OMAKASE: bookings open on Sundays at 4 p.m. for visits from Wednesday to Saturday, guests arrive between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., and the shop is closed Sunday to Tuesday¹. Only the food may be photographed, and the kitchen cannot cater for allergies¹.

The shop first took the grand prize at the TRY awards in 2017 and kept winning after a 2019 renovation, with four consecutive wins that earned it a place in their Hall of Fame². It was also first in TRY's 2020 soy sauce and clear tsukemen categories².