This post was written in 2006. Shop details and prices may have changed since then.
As soon as I got to Hakata Station I had breakfast first and then headed straight for Karo no Uron, but even though I ate at 9 and strolled over slowly, I got there before 10 -_-; So with loads of time to kill, I walked all the way to Nagahama and had ramen at Ganso Nagahamaya.
The sign.
It’s a shabby, really tiny place. I’d heard rumours of long lines, but when I went it was only about half full. Probably because it’s the off-season. This place has a seriously long history too..
The famous Nagahama ramen.
400 yen! A price this amazing is probably only possible in Fukuoka ^_^ The thin noodles, cooked just right al dente and full of bite, and the thin but tasty chashu leave an impression. But the soup was surprisingly not that moving, because it was a clear, clean broth that didn’t feel like tonkotsu ramen at all. The rich, deep Nagahama ramen broth reminded me of Korean seolleongtang or gomtang simmered for hours. For an ordinary Japanese person it must taste new, but for me it was a flavour I was already completely used to. To put it another way, it wasn’t much different from seolleongtang with somen noodles in it. So I was a bit disappointed after coming all the way to Fukuoka for it. I thought it would be some kind of fresh thrill, but finding food like that isn’t easy..
Deflated by the Nagahama ramen, on my way back I came across a famous Hakata ramen shop in Tenjin called Akanoren.
I ordered the regular ramen.
It’s a tonkotsu-shoyu broth. As expected, it’s deep yet light, almost the same as the Nagahama ramen. It’s only 470 yen and tastes like a famous shop that sticks to the basics, but even so it’s not a taste worth going out of your way for. How much can tradition and history really mean when it comes to the taste of ramen…
This is the main shop of Ippudo, the hottest Hakata ramen place these days.
Front shot~
They say the main shop is in Daimyo..
The line is long. First time since arriving in Fukuoka that I queued up to eat ^_^
There were lots of pretty girls in Daimyo, but none of them made it into this shot ^_^
The phantom menu item you can only get at the main shop -_- Kasane-aji ramen.
Apparently it’s the taste handed down since the shop’s early days. Normally Ippudo only sells two kinds of ramen: the spicy Akamaru Shinaji and the light Shiromaru Motoaji. I’d already tried the Akamaru at the Osaka branch, so I ordered the menu item they say you only get at the main shop, and I failed again -_-;; Like the previous two, it was the traditional clean Hakata ramen taste. It was a far cry from the creamy broth I’d been so moved by in Osaka. Looking at the people ordering next to me, not one of them ordered this.
Maybe because it’s the main shop, the side-dish service and the noodles were really good, but thanks to my bad menu choice I went home swallowing my tears. You could honestly call this my Hakata ramen failure diary.