Famed for its clam-and-truffle shio soba, this Shinjuku Gyoen shop held a Michelin one star in 2022-2023 and currently carries a Michelin Bib Gourmand; it runs a numbered-ticket system, so arrive early.
Can I eat here?
We haven’t confirmed specific diets here yet — use the phrasebook to show staff what you can and can’t eat.
A layered clam-and-porcini shio soba blending Japanese dashi with truffle and European aromatics
A ten-seat counter tucked into a quiet backstreet a few minutes from Shinjuku Gyoen, Soba House Konjiki Hototogisu is one of the handful of shops that put ramen on the Michelin map: it took a star in 2019 as only the third ramen restaurant in the world to earn one, held it through 2022-2023, and has carried a Bib Gourmand since dropping to that tier.
The bowl to order is the shio soba: a hamaguri clam and red sea bream dashi built up with Mongolian rock salt and Okinawan sea salt, then finished with Italian white truffle oil, porcini, and a touch of inca berry sauce. It reads like an unlikely pairing on paper, but in the bowl the Japanese seafood dashi comes through first and the truffle and porcini arrive as a second, quieter layer rather than overpowering it. The shoyu version runs a triple stock built from an animal-based broth, wa-dashi, and hamaguri clam under a similar truffle finish, for anyone who wants more weight than the shio. (The restaurant has periodically rotated the exact garnishes -- a duck-fat shoyu and other limited variants have shown up on the menu -- so treat the finer points as indicative rather than fixed.)
There is no reservation line to call. Numbered tickets go out from roughly 9:30am for lunch and 5:30pm for dinner; you register a phone number and come back when it is your turn, and once the day's bowls are gone the shop simply closes -- arrive close to ticket time if a specific seating matters to you. The room itself is small (around ten seats, mostly counter) and closer in feel to a tidy tearoom than a typical ramen shop, which is part of why it reads as a step above the genre even before the first sip.
Closed Sunday and Monday. The ticket machine runs in Japanese, so it helps to know the two names going in: 塩そば (shio soba) for the clam-and-truffle bowl, 醤油そば (shoyu soba) for the richer one.
✓ Last verified Jul 2026
Hours and details can change — please confirm before you visit.
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