Noodles ── Ramen
Hirauchi Tanmen
Hirauchi Tanmen — Kofu's flat-noodle tanmen loaded with vegetables
A salt-based tanmen from Kofu, Yamanashi, built on wide, flat noodles said to feel almost like fettuccine. Bean sprouts, pork, and napa cabbage pile on top for a vegetable-heavy bowl carried on today by several shops around the prefecture.
- Origin: Yamanashi Kofu
- Shio — salt
- About 110 km west of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
Wide, flat noodles that could pass for fettucine announce themselves first, carried in a light salt broth. Bean sprouts, pork, napa cabbage, and scallion pile on generously, and alternating bites of noodle and vegetable make the bowl empty faster than its size suggests, the thick noodles swelling with broth so the texture never turns monotonous.
How it's made
Building a tanmen on a clear salt broth with stir-fried pork and vegetables isn't unusual on its own. What sets this bowl apart is the noodle: cut noticeably wider than an ordinary Chinese noodle, it catches the broth and vegetables' flavor across its broader surface, and the wider cross-section is said to let the wheat's own flavor come through with every bite.
Why it took this shape
This flat-noodle tanmen is said to have originated at a single Chinese restaurant in Kofu and been carried forward by several shops across Yamanashi since. Behind its reputation as a vegetable-heavy bowl seems to lie a deliberate choice to make the noodle itself the star, so broth and toppings would cling to it as one — a single change to the noodle's shape giving a familiar tanmen an entirely new outline.
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.
- Cash-only shops are commonEspecially at ramen shops, it's common to find places that only accept cash — often through a ticket machine.
- 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.
Dishes in the same style
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Yamanashi
- Akebono Daizu no EdamameThe 'akebono' soybean, said to be 1.6 times the size of an ordinary bean, is picked young and salt-boiled — an edamame from the Akebono area of Minobu town. Grown since the Meiji era but resistant to mechanization, aging growers have made it scarce enough to be called a 'phantom bean'.
- Amanatto no OsekihanMade without azuki or cowpea beans, glutinous rice is dyed red with food coloring and mixed with candied sweet beans — a Yamanashi take on celebratory red rice, sweet-salty with a sprinkle of sesame salt. A similarly sweet red rice is said to exist far away in Hokkaido and parts of Tohoku.
- AnbinSweet potato and wheat flour are kneaded with hot water, wrapped around bean paste, slapped flat, and steamed — a sweet from the Kyonan region. Its name is said to come from the slapping motion, revived in Ichikawamisato town's Rokugo area after a local school's closure sparked a heritage-food effort.
- Awabi no NigaiAbalone from Suruga Bay was soy-sauce-marinated and hauled in barrels by horse, the jostling and body heat said to have worked the flavor deep in — a specialty from landlocked Kofu. Sliced thin and paired with its liver, shiso, and cucumber, it endures as a taste of the sea inland.
- Azuki HotoHoto noodles, cut thicker than usual, are simmered in sweet azuki bean soup in place of mochi — a festival food in Yamanashi. The summer festival at Miwa Shrine in Hokuto city's Wakamiko area is nicknamed the 'hoto festival', and azuki's red color is said to ward off misfortune.
- HotoThe leading theory traces the dish to 'hakutaku,' a Chinese noodle dish said to have reached Japan in the Nara or Heian period, its name later shifting to 'hoto.' Legend holds that the warlord Takeda Shingen favored it as army-camp food, giving it the nickname 'Takeda soup,' though no single account of its origin or exact era is settled. Raw noodles and seasonal vegetables are simmered together in a miso broth.