This post was written in 2006. Shop details and prices may have changed since then.
I went to Karo no Uron, a hand-made udon specialist that has been in business in Fukuoka for 130 years (“uron” is Hakata dialect for udon). It turns out it’s near Nakasu. There are plenty of famous places around there, but this time I was short on time and couldn’t drop in on any of them.
Here’s the sign.
I didn’t notice it came out blurry. 🙁 I came prepared to queue, but I was the only one in the place… hmm. For a moment I wondered whether this really was a popular shop.
The basic table setting.
I helped myself to heaps of it. ^_^
Mentaiko udon.
Fukuoka is hugely famous for mentaiko (spicy pollock roe), even within Japan. It’s fantastic with rice, and I’ve brought some home as a souvenir before. But the mentaiko they serve here wasn’t top grade. The nori was ordinary nori too, of course. The noodles were ordinary as well; the broth was fine, but the loosened roe got in the way, so it didn’t taste all that great… Considering the 750-yen price it’s very good value for money, but I had my doubts about whether it’s worth going out of your way for on a trip… Besides, these days Sanuki udon is the mainstream of Japanese udon, and while a long history is nice, I really wasn’t sure that chasing an unchanging flavour is the right thing to do with udon. Next time I think I’ll have to go to Kagawa and taste the real thing.