Why is some ramen cheap… and some expensive? The price of ramen in Tokyo explained.

At Dad's Ramen, this bowl is ¥1,200. The priciest runs above ¥2,000.

1. Location

Downtown Tokyo is expensive. There’s no way around it. Think about rent, utilities, and staff wages. Compare that with more rural areas. And think about the clientele. Ramen in a quieter place is for people going about their daily lives. They aren’t going to splash out on ramen. It’s more of a quick lunch. But in a touristy location or somewhere people go for recreation, spending habits will reflect that.

2. Ingredients

This one’s a no-brainer. Using perfectly marbled Tokyo X pork is going to be different than a standard chashu made in-house from the local deli. A soy sauce aged 20 years is going to cost more than a commercial version. If you want that Instagram-worthy bowl with Wagyu dripping over the edge or truffle shavings, the price will go up.

3. Reputation

If a restaurant has been recognized as a Michelin Bib Gourmand, you can bet the price will increase in the following years. Or if they’ve been featured on a top 100 list of any kind. And that’s fair enough, they’ve earned their reputation. People will line up for a reason. Sometimes higher prices even help with crowd control—there was a restaurant in Tokyo that, for a couple months, limited the number of bowls they sold because the line outside got too long. So if it’s a really famous place, you can expect to pay more.

4. You’re ordering wrong

I hate to break it to you, but sometimes you’re just getting the biggest, most bulked-up version of the menu. It’s like ordering a deluxe pizza versus a simple marinara. The beauty of ramen can be appreciated through the soup, the noodles, and a humble slice of pork—not six or seven slices of pork, a hard-boiled egg, extra seaweed, and a side of rice. Sometimes the difference in price is almost ¥1000.

5. Method

A bowl that can be churned out in under a minute is different from one that takes a painstakingly long time to assemble. A quick truckstop ramen with a bubbling pork stock can rotate customers rapidly compared to an intricate toripaitan with shaved myoga ginger and emulsified with an immersion blender. That also means you need more staff. Complex bowls have slower turnover, so the price might need to be a little higher to reach the same revenue. I often think about this with noodles that have to be boiled for eight minutes or more. Yes, I’ve seen that with extra thick, hardy ones.

All this to say, expensive ramen doesn’t always mean better and cheap doesn’t mean worse. It depends on where you are, what you want, and how you want to experience it. Get out there and experiment. The price of ramen in Tokyo is a vast landscape. I guarantee you’ll find something satisfying at every price point.