This post was written in 2007. Shop details and prices may have changed since then.
The Sanuki region of Shikoku, today’s Kagawa Prefecture, is famous for udon. In that small patch of land there’s an udon shop practically every time you cross the street.. A few years back an udon boom swept the whole country and tourists flooded in, and the craze still shows no sign of cooling off. It even inspired a movie called UDON. I got hooked after watching it too, so I used Golden Week to make a trip to Kagawa.
The very first stop on day one was the famous Nakamura. It’s the place Haruki Murakami raved about in his travel writing, and you could say it sits right at the heart of Kagawa’s udon craze. But even though I drove there as fast as I could, I failed to get my udon on the first day. They were open until 2 p.m., yet when I arrived at 1 they had already closed. So the next morning I got up early and went at 8, an hour before opening.
The famous vegetable patch in the back yard.
This place used to be famous for making customers cut their own green onions. These days they’re so busy that they chop the onions for you.. If you look closely, you can see the old man who handles the parking in the back. Nobody’s here yet, but it fills up with cars soon enough. It’s so far out of the way that there’s really no good way to get here other than by car. Then again, my udon guidebook showed quite a few other udon shops around here.
The courtyard.
When I got there at 8, I was third in line. Still nice and quiet. One of the people who got there before me had come all the way from Osaka just to eat udon, so I picked up a few tips ^_^; It was his third time at Nakamura, and he said he comes to the Sanuki area to eat udon whenever he gets the chance. When I asked him for recommendations, he told me that in a place called Sakaide there’s Hinode Seimensho, the hardest udon shop in Sanuki to actually get a bowl at, and that I should go if I ever got the chance. (My schedule was way too packed, though, so I never made it there.) I also asked what the best thing on the menu here was, and he said plain hot udon is the best. Thanks for the great tips~
The scene at 8:30.
The entrance.
As you can see if you look closely, there’s no sign. Not just at the front door, there’s no sign anywhere. -_-;; The shop itself is tucked away off the road, so if you’re just passing by you’d have no idea anything is there. Most Sanuki udon shops have that kind of vibe. I wandered around the neighborhood for ages myself before I noticed a spot where a lot of cars were gathered, and that’s how I finally found it.
The noodles.
Out of small, large and extra-large, I ordered the large. The noodles alone are 250 yen. They’re soft noodles, as if to say that springy chewiness isn’t all there is to Sanuki udon. That doesn’t mean they’re any less tasty, though. They’re noodles that really stick to the basics. There are three kinds of udon: hot udon, cold udon and kamatama udon. The noodles are cooked the same way; only the way they’re served in the bowl differs a little. Of course I ordered the hot udon that had been recommended to me.
The finished bowl.
Topped with vegetable kakiage, a tempura called akaten, and a raw egg, this came to 500 yen. The tempura was delicious everywhere I went in Sanuki. The udon is plenty tasty on its own, but it made me think you can’t enjoy Sanuki udon 100% without some tempura alongside. The green onions were fantastic too, of course ^_^ The egg honestly wasn’t really necessary -_-;
Hot broth, tasty toppings and soft noodles. Eating udon at a table in the courtyard under a blue sky, I felt warm right down to my heart. It was worth coming all that way to eat it. But Kagawa is full of delicious udon shops besides this one. As long as there are great shops like these, I get the feeling the Sanuki udon boom won’t end as just a boom but will keep going for a long time.