This post was written in 2007. Shop details and prices may have changed since then.
Riding the regional ramen boom, styles like Onomichi, Tokushima, Kitakata, Wakayama and Sapporo ramen have all become popular. The local character is nice, but they’re not especially outstanding in taste; in most cases they’re just riding a trend as part of tourism product development. Since I’d come all the way to Tokushima, I wanted to try the original Tokushima ramen, so I went to the most famous place in Tokushima city, Shina Soba Tatsumiya.
This is Tokushima ramen.
A brown soup with a tonkotsu base, seasoned sweet and savory with dark soy sauce and tamari, topped with sweet-savory simmered pork and a raw egg. It tastes good ^_^ At least better than Onomichi ramen. But I don’t think it’s worth driving a long way just to eat it.
On the way back I stopped by Onomichi again and went into an Onomichi ramen shop called Ajiryu, which for some reason was packed. I wanted to see whether it was just the place I’d been to before that was off.
Onomichi ramen
But it was just as I expected. Onomichi ramen is in the chuka soba family, so there’s a limit to how good it can taste. It’s not easy to serve something better than the original.
Chahan
Chahan is fried rice, and the name means “China’s rice.” It was just average.
Gyoza, the basic side dish at any Chinese restaurant
I took this halfway through eating. Nothing special here either.