Noodles ── Ramen
Kameyama Ramen
Kameyama Ramen — Mie's beef-and-triple-miso bowl built on local wheat and mushrooms
A local ramen from Kameyama, Mie, blending red, mame, and mugi miso into a beef-bone broth. Thick noodles made from the prefecture's Nishinokaori wheat come topped with three kinds of local mushroom.
- Origin: Mie Kameyama
- Miso
- About 310 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Red, mame, and mugi miso all dissolve into a beef-bone stock, building a layered flavor no single miso could produce alone. Thick noodles milled from the prefecture's Nishinokaori wheat sit beneath it, colored further by local mushrooms — hanabiratake, hatake-shimeji, and hiratake — the miso's sweetness and bitterness trading places from one mouthful to the next.
How it's made
An extract simmered slowly from beef bone forms the base, combined with a tare blending red, mame, and mugi miso. The noodles are thick-cut from Mie-grown Nishinokaori wheat, sturdy enough to hold the broth. Topping it with three kinds of local mushroom is part of a build that gathers ingredients from across Mie into one bowl, and the exact ratio of the three miso is said to vary slightly from shop to shop.
Why it took this shape
Mie is said to sit where the region's red-, mame-, and mugi-miso cultures meet, and gathering all three into one bowl in Kameyama, near that boundary, seems to be what led to a blended soup unwilling to rely on just one. Local restaurants banding together, and folding in local wheat and mushrooms besides, appear to be an attempt to let one bowl reflect the whole of Kameyama.
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
- Sakekasu Miso RamenA winter-only ramen from Ageo City, where sake lees from a long-running local brewery are worked into a Chinese restaurant's miso broth. The lees' depth and aroma layer over the miso's savoriness, leaving a mellow finish that warms the body in the cold months.
- Akayu Karamiso RamenMiso ramen with a knob of chili miso in the center, dissolved gradually to shift the flavor.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Mie
- AhodakiOld takuan pickle, once its flavor and aroma have faded, is desalted and simmered again in soy sauce, a pantry staple from the Hokusei area. Its name — playfully self-deprecating, roughly "doing a foolish thing" — nods to eating it well past its prime, a frugal way to waste nothing.
- Arame MakiRehydrated arame, a brown seaweed once offered to Ise Shrine, is wrapped several times around sardine or saury and simmered in soy sauce and sugar. The choice of fish shifts by locality along the Toba coast.
- Bon JiruA miso soup packed with seasonal vegetables such as burdock, eggplant, and pumpkin. Following Zen Buddhist practice of avoiding killing during Obon, it skips bonito or dried-fish stock, relying instead on fried tofu and a generous mix of vegetables for its savor.
- ChagayuRice is cooked in water steeped with a bag of roasted tea leaves. Born in Iga, where farmland was scarce and rice precious, the extra water was a way to stretch the grain further; in summer some households chill the porridge before eating.
- ChatsuJulienned daikon, carrot, lotus root, kelp, and fried tofu are simmered in vinegar and sugar, a dish from Asahi town. Its name is said to come from "chatsu," the red-lacquered vessel once used to serve vegetarian temple food, and soy sauce is deliberately left out to keep the dish pale.
- Fuki DawaraRice cooked with soybeans is wrapped in butterbur leaves into a small rice-bale shape, an Iga-area harvest offering. It is set before the rice-paddy deity at planting time to pray for a good crop, and doubles as a portable snack for breaks between farm work.