Noodles
Morioka Reimen
A postwar Korean-Japanese fusion cold noodle, remade in Iwate
In 1954, Aoki Teruhito, born in Hamhung in what is now North Korea, opened the restaurant Shokudoen in Morioka and combined the mild flavor of Pyongyang-style cold noodles with the spicier taste of his hometown's version. Early reception was rough, and the recipe was reworked over years of customer feedback until the noodle settled into its current potato-starch-and-wheat form.
- Origin: Iwate Morioka
- About 460 km north of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Noodles worked from potato starch and wheat flour into something almost translucent, a rich beef-bone broth, radish kimchi rather than the usual napa cabbage version, and a garnish of seasonal fruit such as watermelon or apple. The noodle carries a notably stronger bite than most cold noodles, chewy enough to take some effort to bite through — a noodle meant to be chewed, not slurped, and one that won't snap even lifted on chopsticks. A cold broth, spicy kimchi, and sweet fruit all share the same bowl.
How it's made
A dough with a higher proportion of starch is worked to give the noodles their unusually strong chew. Beef bones are simmered a long time for the broth, then chilled and served with the heat of the radish kimchi set against the sweetness of seasonal fruit — the standard way to eat it. Spice level is often adjustable by shop, and the balance between heat and sweetness shifts as the bowl is eaten down.
Why it took this shape
In 1954, Aoki Teruhito, born in Hamhung in what is now North Korea, opened the restaurant Shokudoen in Morioka and combined the mild flavor of Pyongyang-style cold noodles with his hometown's spicier version. Early reception was rough, but reworking the recipe over years of feedback from customers in an inland basin with wide seasonal swings gave rise to this potato-starch-and-wheat noodle found nowhere else — a bowl that binds two hometowns' flavors into one.
Before you go
- How to read a ticket machineShops that use a ticket machine (shokken-ki) often place their most popular items in a similar spot.
- Foods to look for in summerA guide to foods often seen in Japan around summer — eel on the Day of the Ox, hiyashi chuka, somen, shaved ice, edamame with beer, and hamo — with rough pointers for finding them.
- What staff say, and how to respondCommon set phrases you'll hear at restaurants, with what they mean and what to do when you hear them. You don't need to memorize them — just recognizing them is enough.
Dishes in the same style
- Abura SobaNo broth is poured at all — noodles are tossed in a soy-and-sesame-oil tare pooled at the bottom of the bowl, said to have started at shops in the Musashino area in the late 1950s, with vinegar and chili oil stirred in partway through.
- Abura ZomenPork and somen are fried together with a splash of broth, the oil and stock emulsifying into a silky coat on the noodles. Just how somen took root in wheat-free Amami isn't clear, but the dish is a fixture whenever people gather, not least for the August Dance festival.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Related lineage
- Wanko SobaA style from Hanamaki, Iwate, where bite-sized portions of soba are refilled bowl after bowl. It is said to derive from a lord being served small portions of soba, one bowlful at a time.
- Morioka JajamenThe dish is credited to Takashina Kanshō, who started out selling from a street stall and drew on the fried-sauce noodles he had encountered in Manchuria to develop what became Hakuryu's signature bowl. Hot noodles are topped with stir-fried meat miso, cucumber, ginger, and scallion and mixed together; finishing the meal by cracking an egg into the bowl and adding broth, called 'chi-tan-tan,' is an established local custom.
Also from Iwate
- Azuki BattoRested wheat dough cut into wide noodle strips is served in a sugar-sweetened red-bean broth — made along the Sanriku coast for building-raising and harvest celebrations, with a custom of eating it seven times on the seventh day of Obon for good health.
- Hecchoko DangoDumplings of millet and sorghum flour, each dimpled in the center, are simmered in a sweet red-bean soup — also called "ukiuki dango," a harvest-close treat from rice-poor northern Iwate where they float to the surface as they cook.
- Hina ManjuRice-flour dough tinted with food coloring is wrapped around red-bean paste and shaped into flowers, peaches or rabbits using wooden molds — tied to a doll-viewing custom in Hanamaki's Ohasama area, offered alongside kirisensho at the Girls' Festival.
- Hizu NamasuThin slices of cartilage from a salmon's head — "hizu" — are salted, cured in vinegar and tossed with daikon and carrot namasu — a rare delicacy from just one small part of the fish, a New Year dish where salmon run up Miyako Bay.
- Dento Mochi RyoriAn umbrella term for some 300 ways of dressing mochi — sweet red bean, edamame paste, walnut, natto, zoni and more. A domain-era custom of pounding mochi twice a month left Ichinoseki with a "mochi calendar" of 60-plus occasions a year and a formal ceremonial mochi course still observed today.
- Imo no Ko JiruAutumn taro is simmered with chicken, tofu, daikon and carrot in a soy broth — a fall favorite of the taro-growing Kitakami river valley, still enjoyed at riverside "imoni-kai" gatherings around Kitakami's Futako district.