Mensho Tokyo

Chef Tomoharu Shono has a stiff prescription for eating ramen: enjoy the contents of your bowl in their freshly prepared state; and absolutely no sharing among the table. It’s also a bit of a public service announcement – if diners would dial back the chat and tuck into their soup, it might help to abate the hour-long queues his ramen shops are prone to.

Shono founded Mensho in 2015, which has since become a revered chain with locations in the US (the San Francisco location is listed in the Michelin guide), Thailand, India and now Australia. Melbourne came first in 2023, followed by this Sydney branch a year later.

Mensho’s menus include dishes dedicated to each specific location. Exclusive to Sydney is the dinner-only lobster bisque ramen, made using an entire lobster per bowl. It was inspired by Shono’s first trip to Sydney, where he zipped straight from the airport to the Fish Market. The bisque, made from lobster and shrimp, is combined with chicken stock and shio koji, delivering an incredibly rich, deeply flavoured broth.

But Mensho is most famous for its signature tori paitan, made using a chicken broth based on mizutaki, a Japanese hot pot dish. To make the broth, the kitchen team simmers chicken, kelp and vegetables for six hours and then refrigerates the soup for a further 24 to develop the flavour. The resulting creamy white broth is served with fresh noodles and topped with duck char siu.