Noodles
Tsuke Naporitan
Fuji City's tomato-broth noodles, eaten dipping-noodle style
The dish was created in September 2008 through a collaboration between a TV town-revitalization segment and the Yoshiwara shopping street in Fuji City. Thick noodles are dipped tsukemen-style into a double stock built on a tomato base with chicken broth, and a local neighborhood group later took up promoting it citywide.
- Origin: Shizuoka Fuji
- About 110 km southwest of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
A tomato-based broth carries the savor of chicken stock, built as a double soup for dipping. The noodles, thicker than usual, hold their bite even after soaking and taste lighter than standard Napolitan. The broth runs a vivid vermilion, its color alone enough to draw the appetite.
How it's made
A tomato base is combined with a Japanese-style chicken stock into a double soup, and thick noodles are served on a separate plate for dipping tsukemen-style. It was created in September 2008 through a collaboration between a TV segment and the Yoshiwara shopping street. Serving the noodles and broth in separate vessels is what lets the dish stay hot to the very end, and many shops bring the broth to a final boil right before serving.
Why it took this shape
Recasting a Western spaghetti standard as a local specialty, the dish borrowed the dipping-noodle format of tsukemen, which let the broth and noodles stay separately hot to the last bite. Splitting the broth from the noodle reads as its own attempt to translate a Western dish into a local idiom.
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
Also from Shizuoka
- Abekawa MochiFresh-pounded rice cake is dusted in soybean flour mixed with sugar. Named for the Abe River, it's said to have been famous among Tokaido travelers as a teahouse specialty and to appear in the travel novel Tokaidochu Hizakurige.
- BokumeshiSteamed eel and shaved burdock are simmered together and folded into freshly cooked rice. Its name is said to trace to oversized eels unfit for sale, used in staff meals at eel farms along the Oi River — a mixed rice dish of the region.
- Fuji KinkaBred by Shizuoka Prefecture by crossing its own Duroc line, Fujirock, with Jinhua, a rare breed from China's Zhejiang province — found only in Shizuoka. Said to combine Jinhua's tenderness with Fujirock's marbling.
- Fujieda Asa RamenA town that eats ramen at breakfast — often a hot bowl followed by a cold one.
- Fujinomiya YakisobaIt grew up as a postwar snack at Fujinomiya's candy shops and okonomiyaki stalls. Its identity rests on three local staples: chewy steamed noodles, pork-lard cracklings called nikukasu, and a sardine-powder topping called dashiko.
- GawaRaw bonito is minced and mixed into a chilled miso broth with cucumber, pickled plum, and shiso. Its name is said to come from the "gawa-gawa" sound of stirring miso into ice water aboard a fishing boat — originally a summer meal made at sea.