The Gotouchi Ramen

The story of “Gotouchi Ramen” – Local Ramen

There are 47 prefectures in Japan. In the most of the cities you can find “Gotouchi Ramen” that literally means “the local ramen” that is specialty of the region.

Recently it is more and more popular to travel the country and taste the local ramen. In the big city you can find the franchise of the “Gotouchi Ramen”. Therefore, you can taste the different ramens without the effort to travel the country.

The noodles and the bouillons are widely variated, tick to fine one, a strait noodle to a curled one. The fish stock, the meat or mixed one.

It is deeply related to the climate of the region, history and availability of the ingredients. Therefore it is very interesting to taste them and compare, it is one of the great reason of the ramen tour.

It may take 100s of pages to describe the local ramen, so I just want to take a few examples. The map shows the location of the famous local Ramen.

Ramens in the Kyusyu Island are usually “Tonkotsu Ramen” The bouillon is made from the Pork Bones. Geographically Kyusyu is close to the continent, Nagasaki and Hakata are long time played the role of the gate to Korea and China. Therefore taste is deeply affected by the continent.

Going to north east, the bouillon tend to be the soy sauce base, and noodle becomes wide and curled. Typical example is “Kitakata Ramen” The noodle is closer to a Udon.

Hokkaido was developed after the Meiji Restoration (1868).  To adopt its cold weather, European agriculture was introduced. Sapporo Ramen is based on the strong Miso based soup with Butter, lard, and cone, the noodle is tick, strong and curled. Which is perfectly matched to its dry and cold climate.

We do not have the standard of  Nice Ramen yet. However if it were, what should it look like? It had been a big question long time. It should meet the climate of French Riviera, and preference of the local peoples. However, 99 percent of the Japanese must agree that it is a ramen. Our challenge will continue, until the tourists choose to visit Nice to taste the Nice Ramen…