Special tonkotsu ramen at 9am opening in Sokcho: Ichiba Ramen

The bottom line first

This was one of the most memorable meals of our whole Sokcho trip 🍜⭐️

✅ We both really love ramen — we've been to plenty of ramen places in Korea and eaten a lot of ramen on trips to Japan too — but walking out of here, we both said the exact same thing: "This is the best ramen we've ever had." 🥇

Ichiba Ramen (a Sokcho ramen restaurant — our #1 tonkotsu ramen counting Korea and Japan combined)

Ichiba Ramen (Sokcho) basic info

📍 Address 348 Jungang-ro, Sokcho-si, Gangwon-do, South Korea

⏰ Hours Daily 9am–9pm Last order 8:30pm *Wednesday 9am–2pm

Group seating available, Wi-Fi, separate men's/women's restrooms, reservations, parking

A Yeongnang-dong, Sokcho restaurant — ramen for a morning hangover meal?

While trying to figure out what to eat for our hangover breakfast during our Sokcho trip, we ended up at Ichiba Ramen near Sokcho Tourist and Fishery Market! Honestly, when hunting down a ramen place while traveling, I did wonder whether we should just eat Korean food to cure the hangover instead... but we ended up finding a ramen place of a lifetime...

The interior is clean but also has a cute, cozy feel. ⭐️ Since it opens at 9am, it's perfect for anyone in Sokcho who wants ramen for breakfast or lunch to cure a hangover! 🍜

Special tonkotsu ramen ₩15,000, kiosk ordering and an open kitchen

Tonkotsu ramen is the main dish at Ichiba Ramen, and we went with the special (₩15,000)

You order at a kiosk and pick up your food, and the owner runs the place by himself. But get this — the ramen shop has an open kitchen. You know only really well-managed restaurants dare to run an open kitchen.

According to the store's description, ⭐️ they use Korean domestic pork bones and simmer the broth for 30 hours. This is a place that puts a lot of time into the broth, which is the most basic foundation of ramen flavor. There's also a story that the owner personally sought out ramen masters in Japan to learn technique, so this doesn't feel like a place just imitating a Japanese vibe on the surface. Tasting it, it wasn't "salty because they had to make it taste rich" — the depth really came from the broth itself.

Topping balance and the minced garlic touch

Since it's the special tonkotsu ramen, even the bowl is on another level! Genuinely generous portions. Char siu, bean sprouts, mushrooms, and even egg 🥓🥚🍄🟫 — none of the toppings felt like they were just there to fill space; eating them all together, the balance was really memorable.

They put minced garlic on a spoon for us to add as much as we liked 🧄 — I stirred it all in thinking it'd be great, and it really did deepen the flavor!!

It's tonkotsu, but surprisingly not salty

When you think tonkotsu ramen, you usually picture a rich, oily broth, and plenty of places make it pretty salty. Before my first sip, I even thought, "If it looks this creamy and rich, it's probably salty?" 🤔 — but I was surprised after the first bite. The broth was rich but not salty; it had that signature pork bone broth heaviness, but the aftertaste didn't linger as overly greasy or salty, so my spoon kept going back for more.

⭐️ After we finished eating, we asked the owner and he said that Japanese people mostly just eat the noodles, so the seasoning there tends to be strong, whereas Korean people drink the broth too, so he adjusted the seasoning accordingly. ⭐️ He also said the reason it has zero funky smell is that he uses Korean domestic pork bones for the broth — different ingredients make the difference.

Huge char siu, zero funky smell

Everyone, look at this huge char siu!!! 🥓 This is the kind of thing that can easily end up smelling gamey, but it was genuinely soft and delicious with zero funky smell at all!! 🥇 Eating it, I even thought, "Ah... maybe Korean people should eat ramen in Korea to suit their palate?!"

The thing I'm most sensitive about with tonkotsu ramen is the gamey pork smell, and here, there was truly no off-putting smell in either the meat or the broth. So I think this would be worth trying even for people who love the rich taste of tonkotsu but usually can't handle it because of the pork smell!

True to a Japanese ramen shop, they even use Japanese-brand shichimi and pepper. I personally love these kinds of spices, so I sprinkled some on partway through 🧂✨

We've eaten ramen many times in Japan too, but the moment we finished eating, we both said this was the best we'd ever had, counting Korea and Japan combined 🥹. The rich but not salty tonkotsu broth, the soft char siu with no gamey smell, and the noodles that didn't get soggy even by the time we finished along with the texture of the bean sprouts and mushrooms — the balance was really great. Next time we visit Sokcho, we're definitely coming back on day two of the trip for a creamy pork tonkotsu ramen as a breakfast-and-lunch hangover cure!

Chargers and hair ties — a place that thinks of travelers

And the owner is genuinely kind. The food tasted great, but what stuck with me walking out was how thoughtful the store was. Maybe because a lot of travelers come here, but they had phone chargers ready inside the store 🔋🔌, and even hair ties prepared separately for anyone bothered by long hair while eating!

These might seem like small things, but as a customer, little details like this end up feeling like a big deal. I thought, "Ah, the owner here really thinks ahead about what might be inconvenient for guests." He was also just genuinely kind in how he treated us, so the whole dining experience was great, not just the taste 😊

Near Sokcho Tourist and Fishery Market — what about parking?

Ichiba Ramen is near the entrance of the public parking lot at Sokcho Tourist and Fishery Market. According to the store's signage, they also give out a 30-minute free parking voucher if you use the public parking lot, so it's a good stop while browsing the Sokcho market too. We went a bit after 11am, and by lunchtime we ended up parking right in front of the restaurant.

When traveling around Sokcho, you often end up eating raw fish, mulhoe (cold raw fish soup), and snow crab meal after meal, so I'd also recommend having a hot, rich bowl of ramen like this for breakfast or lunch somewhere in between 🍜💛🧡