Inquiry: Kyushu Cuisine for Girlfriend's Trip

[mascarpone]

My girlfriend, a native of Tokyo, will visit Hakata City for the first time. The event she is attending is a friends wedding and she will have a bit of free time while she is there. Please recommend some specific locations with address and contact information for some inexpensive regional quisine of Hakata City.

In particular, she is interested in Kyushu Style Lamen, Motsu Nabe, and Udon.

Any and all locations (from restaurant establishments to Street Food vendors with food Carts) are welcome.

Arigato Gosighmas.

mascarpone

(New York City)

[JasonTrue]

I stayed in the Tenjin area of Fukuoka (Hakata) a few years ago, and this area is fairly well known for the assortment of Yatai (street stalls) that set up shop at night. Ramen, oden and so on are standard fare in such places. I tended to avoid them since I'm vegetarian and street vendors, save the occasional yaki-imo, are rarely offering things even remotely in that category.

Unfortunately, I'm not likely to be able to recommend specific locations since addresses usually require parsing by multiple police box attendants before they become useful, and I mostly discovered everything in Fukuoka by accident rather than by research, and the Japanese friends who were my fellow travelers were much the same way except they were the ones with the guidebooks. We only actually ate moderate amounts of very Hakata food. I visited Tsujiri, a Kansai-based green tea soft ice cream parfait-focused shop. We ended up at a Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki place. We must have had some Fukuoka-specific specialities, but my memory isn't serving me well 5 years later.

If she can spare a day trip to Arita, she can try "godoufu" which is a kind of katakuriko and kuzuko thickened high solids-content soymilk which has a texture like mochi and the nutritional and culinary function of tofu. Shops that sell Godoufu are everywhere in Arita, making things like hiya-yakko and suimono and so on from it. I craved the sappari-ness often enough that I went through the trouble of researching how to produce it at home in the US. My friend and I just chose a convenient godoufu-ya-san on the way to ceramics hunting.

I wish I could remember what I ate in Karatsu, Yanagawa or Dazaifu. Too long ago. The only food photographic evidence I can find in that area involved me chowing down on some candied strawberries on a stick and some grilled ume-stamped daifuku-like sweets in Dazaifu.

Edited May 12, 2005 by JasonTrue (log)

[mascarpone]

Thanks, Jason True. This is very helpful.

[Kiem Hwa]

If she can spare a day trip to Arita, she can try "godoufu" which is a kind of katakuriko and kuzuko thickened high solids-content soymilk which has a texture like mochi and the nutritional and culinary function of tofu.

I craved the sappari-ness often enough that I went through the trouble of researching how to produce it at home in the US.

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Jasontrue-

godoufu sounds yummy! I love mochi and I love tofu..... can you spare more details on how to make this?

Thanks!

[JasonTrue]

No problem, Kiem. I've posted more details on a new Godoufu topic.

Jasontrue-

godoufu sounds yummy!  I love mochi and I love tofu..... can you spare more details on how to make this?

Thanks!

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[Kiem Hwa]

At the Shirokiya over here, we just had a Fukuoka Fair. I ate some Inari stuffed with various flavored okowas, wrapped in mustard cabbage leaves, also they had sushi rolls using the mustard cabbage to wrap it instead of nori (I think there was nori wrapping stuff inside it though).

Another thing I picked up was this Ume-Chirimen, which had little bits of dried ume and shiso leaves in mixed in with the Chirimen...yummy! Now I need a hot bowl of rice....

[mascarpone]

Thanks very much for the suggestions, everyone. My girlfriend is in Saitama now and will go to Kyushu next week. Any other suggestions would be most welcome.

[lambretta76]

I just recently had the Kyushu-style ramen at Jangara Ramen in Tokyo. The stock is made with pig bones and is much more flavorful (to me, at least) than the more traditional and miso-based ramen stocks.

Jangara is a chain, so there may be one out that way? (Though I'm sure someone in Kyushu does Kyushu-style ramen better than this chain.)