Yokohama Ramen — Iekei Thick Pork-Soy Broth

Yokohama is the birthplace of Iekei Ramen (家系ラーメン, 'family-style ramen'), a distinctive style featuring thick tonkotsu-shoyu broth (pork bone and soy sauce blend), flat wide noodles, and standard toppings of chashu pork, spinach, and nori seaweed. The style was created in 1974 by Yoshimura Minoru at his shop Yoshimura-ya (吉村家) near Yokohama Station, and it spawned hundreds of affiliated shops using '-ya' (家) suffix in their names.

Iekei ramen is highly customizable — customers specify noodle firmness (hard/normal/soft), oil level (normal/more/less), and broth intensity (normal/rich/light) when ordering. The thick, creamy broth coats the noodles and clings to the wide, flat shape. The style is heavier and saltier than Tokyo-style shoyu ramen, designed to satisfy manual laborers in Yokohama's port district. Today, Iekei has spread throughout Japan, but Yokohama remains the heartland with the highest concentration of '-ya' shops.